Love and Other Historical Accidents
by PacificRimbaud
Summary: Hermione Granger and Draco Malfoy never intended to blow up their life's work, but that's what they've gone and done. Now they're trapped 200 years in the past, with a broken Time Turner, a missing snuff box, a handful of overly-eligible daughters, and a House-elf with a grudge. It will require the combined power of their intellects to get them home. Too bad they despise each other
1. Chapter 1: The Explosion

"You know you've got frosting at the corner of your mouth, Malfoy?"

Draco Malfoy looked deliberately at Hermione Granger, standing on the opposite side of the lift, and stuffed his gob with the final, massive bite of the chocolate frosted donut he'd been eating, pinched with aristocratic decorum between his fingers. Without taking his eyes off her, he chewed, swallowed, and swiped his thumb at the corner of his mouth. Then he slid the tip of his thumb between his lips, and sucked.

When he pulled his thumb out of his mouth, it made an audible, wet pop.

"Better now?" he asked.

"Disgusting," she grumbled.

"We all have our appetites, Granger. Can't help if mine are a little naughty. What did you have for breakfast? Overnight oats with chia seeds, seasonal fruit and a splash of unsweetened vanilla almond milk?"

"I prefer soya," said Hermione before she could stop herself, and then, quietly, "_Damn it_."

The elevator they shared slid smoothly down to Level Nine of the Ministry, and disgorged them both into the quiet of the corridor.

"Do you have your weekend all planned out, then?" asked Draco. "Perhaps some yoga, a bit of gratitude journaling, take your cat for a walk?"

Hermione refused to give him the satisfaction of rolling her eyes. It was Friday, and he'd burned through her last nerve on Wednesday.

"I have a perfectly lovely weekend lined up, thank you for asking, Malfoy. Do you plan to enjoy your usual debauches at the Manor? Does everyone involved sign a confidentiality agreement, or are they free to share what goes on behind closed doors? I imagine things can get a little _sticky_."

"Oh, an air-tight non-disclosure, always," said Draco, pulling open the door leading to the Department of Mysteries and holding it for her. "Although all of that may be, sadly, coming to an end. You'll have to hold your breath for juicy details from some other quarter."

Hermione entered the round foyer of the Department. The formerly unmarked doors once revolved at random around the circular walls of the entry room, but they now stood still, and were flanked by neat brass plates displaying titles such as _Magico-Neurology_, _Affective Studies, _and _Thanatology_. She drew her wand from the pocket of her fitted, cropped trousers, held it against the knob of one of the doors, and watched as a small light just above the knob flashed green.

"_Gods _this place has become pedestrian since you lot have Muggle-ized everything," he sneered, poking a finger at the brass placard reading _Temporospatial Research and Development _as Hermione opened the door and he followed her through.

"Government transparency is something of an adjustment, I realize. Things like oversight and broadly agreed upon rules for the use of human test subjects may be indispensable to the ethical expansion of human knowledge, Muggle and Magical alike, but I see how you might find them tiresome."

"I do. I like this style you're experimenting with, though, Granger," he said, watching her remove her jacket. "The trousers, the loose, tucked-in...that's a t-shirt, correct? Like a refined tee? Very laid-back, California woman-entrepreneur getting down to business, if anyone actually conducts business in California. You look centered, empowered, and ready for a midday mojito. I'm waiting for the imminent arrival of golden highlights and beachy waves," he said, sucking at the opening in the lid of a paper take-away cup of coffee. "And why is this coffee such _absolute _shite?"

"Your capacity for complaint is positively supernatural," answered Hermione. "I keep telling you, if you wait until we get into the office, I'll do a proper brew. The witch at the tea cart thinks coffee is a Muggle conspiracy and prepares it accordingly. And stop reading my fashion magazines."

"But I'm addicted now, Granger. To your hateful beans," he drawled in his oval aristocratic tones, "and to _Who Wore It Best? _" He flung the leather satchel he'd been carrying, embossed in black-on-black with the initials of a highly exclusive Wizarding fashion house, onto a weathered teak desk at the left side of the room. Then he set down his coffee cup, removed his outer set of robes, and hung them from a peg by the door.

When he turned around, Hermione was staring at him.

"What?" he asked.

"Nothing. Only you look like you're about to go motoring about Rome on a Vespa on mission for MI6 in search of a decent cappuccino. Do you mean for your trousers to be that tight, or have war reparations made sufficient fabric an unaffordable luxury for the Malfoys?"

Draco looked down at his suit, a close-fitted, matte-black affair in fine-grained wool.

"It's called tailoring, Granger. I understand that fit is an unfamiliar concept when one is accustomed to oversized cardigans and blouses from the high street cut at nothing but right angles," he said. "Do you realize that I heard you use the term 'sweater paws' as you were talking to yourself the other day, when you thought I couldn't hear you? And what's a 'Vespa'? Some kind of Muggle street-cleaning equipment? Would I look good on one?"

"No," shot out Hermione, slamming her own plain olive-drab canvas bag down at the matching desk on the opposite side of the room before turning back to him. "You wouldn't."

"Then I'll find something else to ride," he said archly, lifting an eyebrow at her.

Hermione breathed out in irritation as she made her way to a table in the center of the room supporting a complicated-looking machine, and began fussing with a row of knobs. The apparatus consisted of a series of brass tubes and polished glass lenses, and in its center was mounted a small hour-glass filled with subtly shifting, luminescent sand. The hour-glass was circled with interlocking rings of brass that began to rotate slowly when Hermione tapped them with her wand. Below it was a wide, highly polished lens, hanging directly over a round basin filled with a still, dark liquid.

Draco opened his satchel, pulled out a metal object, and brought it to the table.

Hermione had been twisting at an etched brass dial, and stopped.

"What do you mean, 'All of that may be coming to an end'?" she asked.

"Are you suddenly taking a legitimate interest in what I get up to during my after-office hours?" he asked, lifting a practiced eyebrow at her and placing the metal object at the end of the table.

"I'm not in the least bit interested in what you do with your..._ oh _, good _gods_. I thought you said it was shaped like a swan?"

Draco looked at the object.

"It is."

"That has _never _looked like a swan in its entire life. How could you _possibly_…" She trailed off and shook her head as if to clear it. "If anything, and this is being extraordinarily generous, it looks like a recently deceased badger."

The object under scrutiny was a small silver-metal box, roughly the size of a woman's fist, with two hinges connecting the top and bottom pieces on one side, and a perfunctory clasp holding it closed on the opposite. There was, one would have been forced to concede, a certain quality of extreme repose in the figure; it may have been dead or merely sleeping, but the essential fact was that it had come to its place of rest. Whether it was a badger, a swan, or some intermediate species heretofore undiscovered, was open to lively debate. What must have been agreed upon, in light of the evidence, was that it was loosely in the shape of an acorn lying on its side, with a pert triangular tip at its wide end like a little tail, and a series of lumpy, improvisationalprotrusions at its narrow end. It was delicately etched over its entire surface with what might have been feathers, and might have been thick strands of fur, the grooves having oxidized to black and setting the fine, ambiguous work of the craftsman in sharp relief. There was a pair of what were clearly goggling round eyes- a triumphant exemplar of the artist's ability to wordlessly convey meaning- and the stately open chambers of a pair of ears or, perhaps, nostrils, depending on which part of the figure was supposed to be the head.

It smelled like stale cigars.

"This treasured object has been in the possession of the Wiltshire Malfoys for at least eight generations, and every single one of them has referred to it as the 'cursed, _swan-shaped_ snuff box'. This _avant-garde_ _objet d'art _has been sitting on a shelf in the large drawing room at Malfoy Manor for 200 years, so forgive me if I defer to the expertise of its faithful stewards over a caffeine-peddling, Muggle-minded swot like yourself," he sniffed.

"I didn't know you felt so strongly about the cursed metallic mustelids you keep lying about the place, Malfoy," she answered, "but if that's a swan, I'm a harpy."

"There's nothing to say to that which isn't going to end in my losing something of great anatomical value to me," he replied.

Hermione looked at him with disdain.

"Will you just help me adjust the focus on the Potentiograph," she said. "It's gone soft."

"Has it? It looks fine to me."

"It has. I can see it plain as day," she said. "Get your hand over the glass and help me fix it."

Draco moved close to a raised square of glass at the far end of the machine, and tapped it with his wand. It was suddenly illuminated from below with a diffuse, bright white light, which projected upward into a long run of glass lenses mounted in tubes and interspersed with angled mirrors, ending at the Time Turner suspended over the basin. He placed his hand over the glass, and looked over at Hermione.

"Well?"

Hermione peered down at the reflective surface of the liquid in the basin.

"Oh," she said in genuine surprise. "That's unusual."

"What is it?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said.

"Oh _my_, Granger. Say that again, I'd like to file it away for later."

"Shut it and come and look," she said, motioning for him to trade places with her. He did, and she stuck her hand over the glass where his had just been.

"What do you see?" she asked.

"Your hand, Granger. It's forty five minutes into the future of your fingernails, and you haven't stopped biting them," he replied.

"And what else? Look at the background, not the hand," she said.

"Oh. Well that's interesting, isn't it," he said. "Is that...it looks like mud, maybe? Rather deep at that. Merlin, you're actually grabbing a handful of it, how pastoral of you."

"I'm sure I will have a perfectly good reason," she barked at him. "Minus the mud pies, I saw the same when you put your hand on the platform. Interesting, eh?"

"Very," he said.

"Turn the Turner off and turn it back on again and see what happens. It may just be acting up. We've certainly seen stranger things," she said. Draco brought out his wand, tapped it to bring the Time Turner at the heart of the machine to a halt, then restarted it again.

"What now?" asked Hermione.

"Your hand is in the lab," he said. "You're making me a coffee."

Hermione offered him a personally crafted, expressionless stare.

"It seems like just a bit of potentiality leakage, nothing we haven't seen before in one form or another," he continued. "No playing about in a field of muck for us today, unfortunately." He reached over and tweaked the focusing dial. "Focus is dialed in. Shall we have a look at the cursed snuff box?"

Hermione looked uncertain.

"Do you have your emergency jump kit on you?" she asked.

Draco looked anywhere but at her.

"I've told you a thousand times, Malfoy. They need to be on you at all times: Time Turner, age-stabilizer potion. Both, at _all _times." She pulled a heavy leather pouch out of her left trouser pocket and shook it at him. "Honestly, I'd report you to Shacklebolt if it wasn't your own self-interested, toff backside you're putting on the line by not having your safeguards in place."

"Having that kit in my pocket ruins the lines of the suit," he complained, laying a hand protectively across the waistband of his trousers. "And I need a well-fitting suit to lure unsuspecting witches to my depraved orgies at the weekend."

"No witch in the entire Ministry could possibly be unsuspecting at this point," snorted Hermione. "And do you want to bring this lab down with you? You're welcome to live out the rest of your days as a peat cutter in the year 1386 if that suits your fancy, but we've only had two full years with these new Time Turners. If you'll recall, they took us three rather frustrating years to re-develop in the first place, with those nearly useless notes on the previous models. We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what can be done with the spelled restraints placed on them, let alone what's possible if we can demonstrate that it's safe to take the restrictions off."

"Fine," Draco said. "I'll put the potion in my pocket, but there's no need for us both to carry an emergency Time Turner. If we get in a spot of trouble, we'll use yours." He walked to his desk, pulled a vial of shimmering puce-colored potion out of his desk drawer, and shoved it in his pocket.

Hermione caved to temptation and enjoyed a deeply satisfying roll of her eyes at him, then slid over to make one final adjustment to the focus dial.

"Alright. Go ahead and put the badger on the projection plate."

Draco looked at her meaningfully, placed the awful ornamental snuff box on the illuminated square of glass, and came to stand beside her, looking into the basin.

Nothing happened for a long moment, and then the surface of the liquid flashed an alarming neon yellow. The apparatus shook slightly, and the Time Turner made a sort of grinding noise, and seemed to reverse itself. There was a high-pitched squeal, a metallic _ping, _and the Turner came to a complete stop, and went dark.

Hermione realized after a long moment of silence that in her alarm, she'd dug the fingers of her left hand into the expertly tailored right sleeve of Draco's suit jacket. She looked up at him in disgust, and unhooked herself.

"That wasn't anything we've seen before," he said, brushing off his sleeve and looking at the Potentiograph like it was about to start spouting live kittens like popping corn in the machine at the fair.

"I don't understand," she said, glaring at the machine. She pointed her wand at the Time Turner, and gave it a resounding tap. It remained dark and motionless. Next, she leaned in and gave it an irritated plink with her index finger. "What the blasted, _withering _… _damn _it! We've viewed scores of cursed objects, Malfoy, and none of them has ever _broken _the bloody _machine_. How many Curse-breakings have we looked at ahead of time now?"

"Hundreds."

"We've seen every known family of curse on this wretched thing, given the Curse-breakers foreknowledge about everything from exsanguination to instant death to boils on the bollocks. I honestly can't think of what could possibly be so awful the machine's just decided to pack it in."

"Well, I suppose it's best to set it aside and let the Curse-breakers know. Are you keen to make me that coffee yet?"

"Sod off, Malfoy."

Hermione was incensed. Not only was the machine apparently broken, but they'd failed, and failure made her _itch _, and when she itched, she needed to work.

"I'm firing up the Dislocator. We can pick up where we left off on Tuesday with the apples."

Draco shrugged. "Alright. We'll put the recalcitrant machine in a time out so it can think about what it's done." He picked up his now cold cup of coffee, took a drink, and set the cup down on the corner of the Potentiograph table. Then he turned to a wooden bench that spanned the entire length of the rear wall.

On the left end of the bench sat a machine built along similar lines to the Potentiograph, only it was much smaller, and instead of a basin and lenses, it stood on brass legs over an empty wooden platform.

"I'm driving today," he said. Hermione indulged herself with another luxurious roll of the eyes, and moved to retrieve a shiny brass stopwatch from her desk. With a wave of her wand, a roll of parchment rose into the air and bobbed along beside her, with a quill hovering at the ready over its surface. She took a position at the far end of the bench away from Draco, where there stood a slightly raised wooden surface identical to the one under the Dislocator machine.

There was a bowl of apples, with hazy, speckled yellow and blush-pink skins, sitting next to the machine, and after Draco tapped the Time Turner at the heart of the device with his wand, he used a pair of tongs to carefully set an apple on the wooden platform below it. It seemed to wink out of existence with a soft _pop_.

Draco reached into the bowl of apples with his hand, grabbed a particularly large one, and looked at it philosophically.

"Do you think eating time-shifted apples is going to do me any harm?"

"One can only hope," muttered Hermione.

He took a laggard bite of it while the machine continued to hum cheerfully.

"Not to worry, Granger," he said once he'd chewed and swallowed. "We'll get the Potentiograph up and running again in the afternoon, and take a look at the near future of something particularly good. There's a cursed pair of Italian loafers in the storage closet that I'd like to wear to the Ministry Solstice party, and the more information we can have about them before I put them on my feet the better."

Hermione twitched her lips in irritation, and kept a keen watch on the empty platform in front of her.

"We've certainly had worse days," said Draco. "Everyone's going home with all of their personal bits and bobs in place today." He made steady work of his apple, pulled a seed from the core, and flicked it, hard, across the wooden platform under the Dislocator, where it disappeared mid-flight.

"What did you mean, before? About putting an end to your single life," asked Hermione, narrowing her eyes and still refusing to look at him.

"I don't believe I used those exact words," he said carefully. "In any case, it's nothing _you _need to worry about, I'm sure," he replied, fidgeting with the perfect knot of his elegant tie before bending down and slinging a second apple seed into the machine at an upward angle.

"Now I _am _worried about it," said Hermione gruffly, "because you've brought it up."

"And now you can forget it," he replied tersely.

"Alright, I will," she answered.

"Good."

"_Good. _"

The second hand of Hermione's stopwatch twitched audibly.

"It's only that you live for your swinging bachelorhood," she mumbled.

"Who ever actually said that I'm putting on sex parties at Malfoy Manor? Does that even seem plausible to you?" he said, raising his voice.

"Seems plausible enough, yes. With the…" she gestured up and down at him, "...suits."

"My _suits_, Granger?" he asked.

An apple appeared on the platform in front of Hermione, perfectly round and unbruised.

"Four minutes, 37 seconds," she said, clicking the button at the top of the stopwatch. The quill took note.

"Aging?" asked Draco.

Hermione picked up a brass tube with a cut crystal set in one end, like a kaleidoscope, and looked through it at the apple. "Fifty...two seconds."

The quill scratched dutifully away.

"Getting better," said Draco.

"Markedly so," said Hermione, moving the apple to a bin on the floor and consulting the figures on the parchment.

An apple seed came flying across the platform next to Hermione and hit her squarely in the arm.

Thirty seconds later, another one came zinging through the air at a steep upward angle, and managed to hit her in the chin.

"You're _such_ a spoilt child," said Hermione, without looking up.

"And you're a bloody-minded know-it-all," said Draco. "And thus we remain as we have ever been."

Without any warning, a new apple appeared on the platform next to Hermione.

"We've sent one back," said Draco.

Hermione directed the quill to note the time in a different column on the parchment, then picked up the new apple, and repeated the procedure with the brass tube.

"Seven point two."

Draco adjusted a series of knobs on the Dislocator, then they repeated the forwarding experiment with another apple, which aged at a slightly slower rate than the first.

"Shall we do back, now?" asked Draco.

"I suppose," she replied. Draco tapped the Time Turner in the Dislocator with his wand, and it came to a stop. He adjusted the knobs again, then tapped the Time Turner a second time, and it began to whir in the opposite direction. Draco picked up an apple with the tongs, and set it on the platform.

It disappeared just as the other two had before it.

"Time," said Draco.

Hermione looked at her stopwatch.

'Six minutes." She tapped the tip of her index finger against her bottom lip. "That's a...point zero two rate of de-aging."

"Excellent," said Draco.

A brass knob came flying across the platform next to Hermione and hit her in the hip.

"Ow!" she cried out. "Malfoy, _gods_, that actually hurt. I've put up with your damned apple seeds, but that's solid brass. How hard must you have thrown that?"

"I have no idea. I haven't done it yet," said Draco. He looked perplexed.

"You'll need to explain yourself in about six minutes," said Hermione, rubbing her hip. "Merlin, that's going to bruise." She bent over at the waist to pick up the knob, and as she did, a brass screw flew across the platform and whizzed over her head.

"Granger," said Draco, looking cautiously at Hermione's end of the bench. "Move away from the destination platform, please."

Hermione complied with his request without offering him any argument, an event that had no precedent, and the moment she stepped away, a shower of shattered brass and glass fragments came flying out of the air above the destination platform, and into the space that Hermione had recently been standing in.

As both she and Draco stared wordlessly at the detritus now covering the floor, an empty paper coffee cup with a hole burned through the bottom shot into the room from above the platform, landed on the floor, and lolled back and forth like a pendulum in a lazy, ever-diminishing arc, until finally it lay still and peaceful, calmly smoking.

"I refuse to believe that I've chucked all of _that _into the Dislocation field," insisted Draco.

"That is a lot, even for you," said Hermione.

"What's going on, then?"

"I don't know."

"I liked it better when you said that before. Now it's just disconcerting," said Draco.

They both looked around the room.

"I suspect…" said Draco slowly, "...that we now have about five minutes left before we need to get out of the room."

Hermione nodded gravely.

"We have to_ think. _What's out of the ordinary?" she asked.

They both looked around.

"The box," said Draco, suddenly. "We've left it on the Potentiograph lens."

"Alright. But the Potentiograph is totally dark," said Hermione. "It shouldn't be able to do anything. I suppose we move the box anyway?"

Draco inched cautiously toward the swan-shaped snuff box. As his fingers began to close around it, he let out a loud shout, and pulled back his hand as though he'd been burned.

"It's zapped me," he said, shaking his fingers.

"'Zapped' you?" repeated Hermione.

"That's what I said, Granger, it's zapped me."

Hermione grabbed the set of tongs sitting next to the Dislocator, and went to grab the snuff box with them.

"Steady on, Hermione, I'm not sure that's a good…"

Hermione shrieked as a glowing jet of what looked like chartreuse lightning shot out of the box, and nipped at her fingertips the moment the tongs touched the box's irregular surface.

"Alright. Zapped is fair. No grabbing," she concluded. "Spell?"

"I'm not sure adding magic is a solid plan, here, Granger. I think we're better off putting a containment spell around the table, so we can localize the damage. We've run the scenarios, your Arithmancy is solid. There's nothing these machines can do under any circumstances that will impact more than the immediate area."

Hermione looked devastated.

"What if it doesn't work? We'll lose all of it, Draco. Everything we've done over the last five years, gone. They'll shut it all down, over that blasted..._ badger_," she shouted.

Draco let her taxonomic error slide, and considered their options.

"Alright. I'm going to try to summon it," he said.

"You were _right_, though, Malfoy," she protested, and she saw that even in these circumstances he couldn't stop the beginning of a smirk from sprouting on his face before he squashed it down. "We have _no _idea what adding additional magic directly into this situation will do."

"Do you have any better ideas?"

Hermione hesitated.

"No, but it doesn't follow that…" she began.

"_Accio _snuff box," shouted Draco before she could finish, pointing his wand at the swan-badger sitting in feigned innocence on the Potentiograph platform.

What happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion, which, given the nature of the department it happened in, it may well have.

When the spell hit the snuff box, the lemon-lime neon light that had merely licked in warning at their fingers before now exploded from the box in a fan of crackling stripes, the tip of each one snapping at either the Time Turner at the heart of the Potentiograph, or Draco and Hermione themselves.

When two of them struck Hermione in the chest and arm, it felt as though twin holes were being bored straight through her, sending vibrating shocks of pain radiating out to the tips of her fingers and down through the soles of her feet.

She watched as Draco's moon-pale hair stood on end, and then lit up as though it were made up of the fragile white-hot filaments of a thousand incandescent Muggle light bulbs.

Hermione felt pinned into place by the shock of the curse, and the movements she made toward Draco were as slow and deliberate as wading through freshly poured concrete.

When the jagged yellow tongues of the curse's energy hit the Time Turner in the Potentiograph, it sparked to life and began to spin, at first slowly, and then with increasing speed, until they could hear the movement of its brass rings slice through the air in a high-pitched, oscillating whine that beat in nausea-inducing waves against the shores of their ear drums.

"Hold on," shouted Hermione, finding Draco's fingertips with her own. Wrenching his hand into a firmer grip, she pulled herself toward him, and finally wrapped her arms ferociously around his torso.

The door was a mere ten feet away. They could make it, if they moved now. Together, they could press against the enormous, crushing pressure building up in the room, and make it out the door. Each of the laboratories in the Department of Mysteries was warded, spelled beyond comprehension, against spreading impacts from any of the projects going on behind the closed and still-mysterious doors.

If they could get out, the explosion- because quite clearly there was about to be an explosion- would happen, and then they could go back in and assess the damage.

Ten feet, now nine...Hermione's arms clenched viciously around Draco, whose arms were wrapped around her, pulling, pushing, dragging one another through what felt like the lightless lead weight at the bottom of the ocean.

Eight...seven…

When Draco and Hermione were six feet from the door, the snuff box disappeared with a theatrical burst of noise, as if it wanted nothing more than everyone's attention, and then the Potentiograph exploded.

There was a penetrating rain of brass shrapnel and shards of hot glass. The viewing basin launched itself into the air, held on to its sticky black liquid contents through pure centripetal good fortune as it sailed through the burning brass all around it, then overturned itself and evacuated all over Draco's desk and his expensive designer satchel.

Had they still been in the room, Draco and Hermione would have been shot through with shattered metal traveling through the air at a murderous clip.

It was perhaps for the best that they'd popped out of existence just behind the snuff box.

After the noise was all over, there was a courteous silence while the table that had housed the Potentiograph lightly steamed, as though waiting for a round of applause that never came.

First, there was the black.

Following close on the heels of the black, which was boundlessly, poignantly devoid of all light, there entered into the experience, without warning, a searing green-white-blue strobing stellar explosion that seemed to come from behind the eyeballs and a bit to the left. Next it went black again, and then color wasn't important, because everything was encompassed by a world-bending dizziness and the feeling of being rotated in two directions at once, top to bottom.

Next, was the mud.

Hermione opened her eyes, or her eyes could see after a time where they couldn't; semantic details retreated into negligibility in the void.

The sky was a cheerfully ignorant dome overhead, forget-me-not blue and dotted with round idiotic poofs of cloud that would have smiled in smug satisfaction with themselves if only they'd known how to do it.

The mud. The _mud_.

The mud reeked.

It was thick, glorping, heavy stuff, nearly black, and rolling away from Hermione in deep grooves like waves on the surface a solid pitch-dark ocean that smelled like horse manure.

She heard groaning a short distance away, and sat up.

Draco was already sitting vertically, facing away from Hermione, his legs spread in an ungentlemanlike V, and shaking his head abruptly from side to side as though he had water trapped in his ear.

They were together.

Hermione felt her heart jump up and sprint at the realization that they were, beyond probability, _alive_, and in whatever _this_ was, _together_, sprawled about eight feet apart in the middle of what appeared to be roughly an acre of recently tilled farmland.

Judging by the pornographic squelch made by her left foot, it had recently been raining.

They were together.

They were _alive_.

Both of them, alive, under a blue sky, sitting in a field that smelled like horse shit.

Hermione almost howled with relief.

Draco swiveled around to look at her, and there was no masking the look of irrepressible gladness that crossed his face, before it gave way to a shrewd and watchful wariness.

His hair had for several years been trimmed into a flopping short-back-and-sides, and was allowed to adopt a tousled nonchalance that made one think "_Bed,_" in a way that caused the loins to wobble a bit, and the void hadn't done it any harm. He was sitting in a field of mud, and yet somehow managed to look shaken and wan in a consumptive, poetical sort of way rather than in a disassembled and muck-smirched way like Hermione was sure she must have done.

Against the black mud, his paleness shone, and his silver-grey eyes reflected the limitless blue of the sky.

For a moment, Hermione almost felt something like positive regard toward him.

Then, like an idiot, he smiled.

That _smile_.

The _audacity _of that preposterous, _galling_, brilliant, _disrespectful _smile.

"You _sod_," she said quietly. "You cack-handed, self-important, pompous _prat_. You blew...up...my _lab_!" She had started at a _piano_, worked her way through a rapid crescendo and ended in a feral _fortissimo_.

His face dropped.

"_Your _lab? What do you mean _your _lab," he argued, fatally.

She rose to her knees, then bent down to scoop up a generous handful of that midnight-black, rain-soaked, fecund, yielding, horse shit-smelling mud, and chucked it straight into Draco Malfoy's beautiful, pale, vainglorious, _idiot _face.


	2. Chapter 2: The Wedding

"Malfoy," said Hermione.

Draco said nothing, only continued to walk across the middle of the plowed field, swiping at his face with the cloth he'd conjured after he'd already used a cleaning spell three times.

"Malfoy," she said again.

He didn't so much as twitch a muscle in her direction.

"Malfoy," she continued, loudly, prodding in the mud with the bare toes of her left foot. "Wait up, my shoe's come off."

"To hell with your shoe, and to hell with you," said Draco without turning around.

"You're behaving rather sensitively for someone whose home decor has just run us both through the spin cycle of spacetime," Hermione said.

She pointed her wand in the area where she believed her shoe had been absorbed by the mud.

"_Accio _shoe."

Something shifted within the muck four feet away, then with a drawn-out, flatulent sucking sound, a soil-encased object shaped something like an elongated flatbread reached escape velocity, came flying out of the ground, and slapped Hermione wetly in the chest.

Perched on one leg, she wobbled, tipped, then completely unbalanced and fell hard onto her backside.

"Bollocks!" she shouted as she went down.

At that, Draco finally looked back at her.

"Doesn't feel very nice, does it," he said.

"If you're expecting an apology, you're going to be very disappointed." Hermione hauled herself to her feet. She held her mud-filled left shoe in one hand, and hobbled after Draco along the length of a furrow, leaving squelching indents as she went.

"An apology, from Hermione Granger?" he marveled. "The prospect beggars the imagination."

Draco continued ahead, and soon reached the place where the plowed field was limited by a hawthorn hedgerow, broken by a wooden stile under the vast spread of an aged oak tree. He climbed onto the upper step of the stile, and looked out over the top of the hedge.

Hermione finally caught up with him, and while he surveyed the surrounding area, she cast a _Scourgify _on her clothes and shoes, and put her left shoe back on her foot. Everything was irretrievably stained, and smelled undeniably ripe. She dug in her pocket, and pulled out the leather bag holding her emergency Time Turner and the age-stabilizing potion.

She tipped the contents out into her hand.

Hermione felt a shimmering shockwave pass over her skin.

"Draco?"

He turned around and looked at her.

She held out her palm.

The vial of potion lay intact next to two short arcs of brass, and the remainder of the Time Turner they ought to have been attached to.

"The Time Turner's broken."

"You're joking," he said.

"Of course I am," said Hermione. "I can't think of anything funnier in this situation than our sole means of time travel being rendered useless."

"Maybe we won't need it," he said. "We're obviously still in England. I'd even go so far as to gamble that we're in Somerset. Or Wiltshire."

"Alright," said Hermione, "but _when _are we in England?"

Draco breathed out a hard sigh, stepped over the stile and jumped down to the other side.

"Let's find out, shall we?" He hooked a sharp right and strode out of view behind the hedgerow.

Hermione jammed the broken parts of the Time Turner back into the bag, put the bag into her pocket, and hastily climbed the stile after him.

He was tall, and his long legs covered more ground than hers. She soon found herself taking after him at a light jog while they followed the line of the hedgerow for quite some distance up a gentle slope to the crest of a comfortably rounded hill.

She was breathing hard by the time they came to a standstill, and spat softly as a gust of wind pushed her curls against her eyes and into her mouth.

There was a loud gurgling noise.

Hermione rotated her head toward Draco like a barn owl, and blinked.

"Was that your stomach?"

"I'm hungry," he said. "Merlin, I could murder a curry right now."

"Oh! Well, let's just pop round the corner chip shop, shall we?" She gestured around at the greenery. A tiny brown bird hopped about on the top of the hedgerow and regarded them with its glinting black eye. "You know, if you breakfasted on something more nutritionally sound than chocolate frosted donuts, you wouldn't be hungry this quickly afterward."

Draco frowned.

"But I like chocolate frosted donuts," he said. "If that explosion had killed us both, I would have been completely at peace with my last meal."

"You can't eat every meal as though it's your last, Malfoy. You're not going to be twenty-four years old and eleven stone soaking wet forever."

"Is my name Weasley? Is it Potter? Have I been tried and convicted of total incompetence in the court of Granger, and now stand blindfolded, in the line of fire of your motherly concern?"

"I don't _mother _Ronald and Harry."

"Alright."

"Don't '_Alright _' me."

"Al-right," he said. He carefully articulated the letter _T_.

Hermione grimaced.

"Could we Apparate back to London, I wonder?" Draco thought out loud.

"I think we're better off in the countryside until we can figure out more about where and when we are," she said. "It could be in the middle of the Great Plague for all we know."

"Hmm. Possibly. But we haven't seemed to suffer significant age-related effects," he said. He searched Hermione's face for a long moment, then looked carefully at the backs of his hands. "I wonder whether we've simply Dislocated."

"It's possible. Hello! Look, down there, Malfoy. There's a building on the other side of those trees." Hermione pointed down the hill, where three or four kilometers off, a grey peaked roof peered through the spaces in the foliage in an elongated copse of ash trees. "We ought to walk. Apparation is risky until we have more information."

Draco had already started loping down the hill, with his hands jammed into the pockets of his black trousers. Hermione set off after him at a bounding jog, spitting intermittently as the gusting wind continued to play at whipping through her hair.

It was closer to five kilometers.

Hermione was by no means unfit, but running after Draco for nearly half an hour over uneven ground in recently exhumed flats made her tired, and increasingly sympathetic to Draco's vociferating gut.

They closed in on the house with an abundance of caution, like a pair of commandos in the mine-sprung jungles of some distant, muggy war. Their serpentine approach brought them hopping across the rocks in a narrow stream flanked by spindly beech trees, then took them on a long wade through a knee-high sea of bluebells. The light that reverberated off of the purple blooms lent the air in the uncrowded forest a quality of drugged languor.

It was still early in the day, but Hermione wondered when and where she would lay her head down for the night.

They pulled up beside an abandoned one room stone cottage, slowly being eaten by the creeping edge of the wood, its slate roof patched with moss. As they approached, a starling erupted, shouting in complaint, from one of the empty window frames and flew out into the trees.

About a hundred meters ahead and at the top of a slight incline from the wood, they could see the back of the house.

It was old, and very large, a stately grey Tudor with a multitude of roof peaks, guarded by stands of ancient oak and ash. Its facade dripped with a hedonistic abundance of pale violet racemes of wisteria, like clusters of grapes ready to drip into the mouths of mythical Greeks, and its mullioned windows overlooked the boxy green and white-graveled pathways of a series of manicured gardens.

At the ends of the graveled walks nearest the house, there unfolded a wide, closely cropped, brilliantly green lawn, dotted with a pair of antediluvian elms, spreading out in generous invitation to both activity and repose. On this verdant play field, there was a crowd engaged in the unmistakable motions of conducting a wedding.

There was a gazebo, starkly white with fresh paint and conspicuously new against the weathered maturity of the house at its back, and its posts and the lines of its roof were heavily armored with dense flower garlands in shades of pink and purple.

There was a large crowd gathered on the lawn, mingling in groups of three or four, and Draco and Hermione could hear the occasional sound of a particularly loud laugh.

"Early 1800s," said Hermione, without looking at Draco.

"Mmm," he said, noncommittally.

"Are you disputing me?"

"I said 'Mmm,' I'm not sure how you interpret that as a dispute."

"I've read about this. Look at them: clothes in simpler fabrics and less adorned than in previous eras. A surfeit of heads has recently been removed from their class peers in neighboring France, and it seems advisable to dial back a bit on the show. Empire waists and flowing skirts made to emulate the style of classical Greeks, for some reason. I'll have to look that part up when we get back. There's an increased interest in hygiene and frequent clothes-washing, so lighter fabrics. I think there were issues with sheerness and needing extra layers of underclothes. Hair bound up and wrapped in ribbons. I'd say the Regency of Prince George, or just prior to." She squinted. "And judging from the number of people wearing robes over the lot, and what I think is a House-elf wearing a formal dish towel, this is a Magical household."

Draco sighed.

"Alright," he said. "Ten points to Gryffindor. I accept your eighteen oh-something-or-other based on sartorial evidence, and I'll do you one better. We're firmly in Wiltshire, and this," he pointed at the manor, "is the Longbottom estate, Bugg-Buntley Hall. Malfoy Manor is almost exactly six and a half kilometers," he spun around, and pointed in a line heading diagonally away from the Longbottom estate, "in that direction."

"Oh!" said Hermione. "That's fascinating, I had no idea there was a Longbottom estate. I thought Neville grew up in a semi-detached in Kensal Rise."

"He did. I believe there's a chronically indisposed great uncle sitting in this place back in 2004."

"Astonishing! I wonder who will inherit? I can't imagine the upkeep on an estate like this is affordable these days. Those days, I mean. Our days."

"Magic helps, enormously. As long as you're keeping on top of repair and maintenance spells, waterproofing and energy loss incantations, you're saving on the lion's share of expenses there. But you still need a rather sizable vault and a solid investment portfolio," said Draco. "Completely remodelling the entire house, and clearing out the stink of Dark..." he trailed off, glancing down at her arm, where the wounds Bellatrix Lestrange had given her had healed into a series of truncated, abstract silver-white lines. Hermione had done her best, but hadn't been able to completely remove them by magical or Muggle means. He cleared his throat. "Well. It was necessary. But it wasn't cheap. Not that it ought to have been," he finished, quietly.

He rubbed his forearm absently.

Hermione was opening her mouth to say something when Draco's belly made a noise like a rock tumbler buried at the back of a linen closet.

"Alright. We're inviting ourselves to a wedding," he said.

"You're joking," said Hermione. "We're both dressed in stained 21st century office attire, and we smell like stablehands. Never mind that our theories about the stability of timelines are only that. We simply don't know enough about interacting with people in the past to do it casually. We're not getting anywhere near those canapés."

"But I _want _them," he said. "And if you'll recall, I'm a spoilt child, and if I know how to do anything, it's get whatever I want, whenever I want it. And I'm right, I'm sure of it, that we'd have to at _minimum_ murder someone to really cock things up, and this doesn't seem like that sort of wedding."

"We could Apparate to London. Go to the Ministry, explain our circumstances. Or perhaps even better, to Magical Oxford, and appeal to the aid of one of the Dons there," said Hermione. "Someone is doing work in Time in this period, we can get help. Get the Turner repaired, or even get a new one."

"Hmm. Perhaps. There's rather a lot to consider there. But now, lunch."

"You can't possibly be serious," said Hermione.

Before she'd finished her sentence, he had Apparated away.

He was gone for something like twenty minutes, if the count Hermione kept in her agitated head was anywhere close to accuracy, and when he Apparated back, he was holding a massive armload of clothes.

"Oh for Merlin's sake, where did you get those? Have you stolen them?"

"I found them in my own home, thank you very much," he said.

Hermione looked at him in disbelief.

"Don't look at me like that. I was hopeful that the wards on the Manor would accept me, as a Malfoy," he said. "As it turns out, I was able to walk right in."

"Good gods, Malfoy, what if the current family had seen you?"

"I'm happy to report that Malfoy Manor is currently occupied by a middle aged dowager and her spinster daughter. If you think I survived my adolescence living with a pack of escaped convicts and a venomous snake the length of a tour bus and _didn't_ learn how to sneak around my own home without getting caught, you don't understand me in the slightest," he sniffed. "Avoiding the notice of two women embroidering while discussing this morning's rain showers and a handful of House-elves doing the washing up was something a determined toddler would have been able to accomplish."

"And you used that skill to steal women's clothes," Hermione said flatly.

"And women's underclothes."

"Yes, of course." She looked at the bundles in his arms. "There were men's things?"

"In one of the bedrooms, yes. I'll need to Transfigure them slightly, of course, depending on how up to the minute my great times six grandfather's fashion sensibility was before he died. But here, put this on and let's go see if there's a salmon paté."

He handed her a bundle of fabric, some in a dark, bruise-colored purple, and some in white linen, and began to take off his jacket.

Hermione looked away.

"Fine. Have it your way. But only because I'm capable of admitting that the experiments we ran with the tinned peaches do seem to support a stable time loop hypothesis. But I draw the line at changing in the middle of the woods in front of you," she said. "I'll be in the cottage."

Draco rolled his eyes and continued stripping off as she made her way inside the abandoned stone house.

It smelled of dank moss and leaf mould inside, and the air was several degrees cooler than the surrounding wood.

Hermione looked through the tangle of fabric, and determined that there was a long-skirted dress, a pair of stockings, and a variety of under-things packed together in a bundle.

Hermione removed her shirt, then her trousers, leaving on her bra and knickers, and pulled apart the tumble of undergarments.

There was a pair of long stockings, a white chemise, what appeared to be a petticoat, and finally, a corset.

Hermione held the corset out in front of herself and stared.

It was short, made from soft material, and it laced up the back. It had substantial shoulder straps, and the front was stiffened down the middle from the neckline to the hem by a single, wide strip of bone.

Hermione had no idea what to do with it.

She slipped the stockings on first. They came up to the middle of her thighs, and drooped like the skin of an elephant at the top, which Hermione supposed must have been the norm. Next, she pulled the corset on over her head. It drooped morosely at the bosom; it appeared that the Malfoy spinster was a woman with an overflowing cornucopia. She pulled the chemise over her head, and considered the way it clung awkwardly to the Himalayan topography of the sunken corset.

It wouldn't do.

She removed the chemise, and then removed the corset, then pulled the chemise over her head, then pulled the corset on over the top of that. It was still a baggy mess, but a more likely one.

A new problem presented itself: the straps of her bra were hidden, but the tops of the cups soared over the bustline of both the chemise and corset.

"Merlin," she muttered, considering the high water mark of the neckline. "It's a wonder that he didn't grab me a set of sequined pasties."

She unhooked her bra through the layers of fabric, then pulled first one strap off through the sleeve the chemise and down over her arm, repeated the procedure on the other side, then pulled the entire bra out through the left armhole of the chemise and tossed it on the pile of 21st century clothes. It looked better, but everything was still startlingly capacious at the bust. She grabbed her wand and did a quick shrinking spell over the garment, and did her best to pull the string at the back taut, but quickly realized she was going to need another set of hands.

"Malfoy," she called out. "I need help with the string."

There was a beat of silence, then Draco's voice from outside.

"The string," he said.

"Yes, the blasted string, get in here and yank on it for me."

She walked close to the door, and turned her back to it. She felt him approach, and then he paused.

'What's the problem, Malfoy?" she said.

He said nothing, but finally moved, and her frame jerked lightly as he tugged at the lace at the back of the corset. It quickly snugged up around her chest and ribs.

That was better. It still wasn't a perfect fit, but it would do, and her bustline no longer looked like a deflated football.

In fact, as Draco drew the laces tight on the corset, the stiff boning up the middle seemed to jam itself between her breasts and shift them up and apart. By the time he was done, they puffed over the neckline of the chemise like a round, gleaming pair of the baked Chinese barbecue pork buns Draco sometimes picked up for lunch and ate while leaning over the bowl of the Portentiograph, which made Hermione shout at him.

"What do I do with the end of it?" Draco asked.

"The string? Oh. Well, give it a good knot, I suppose."

He did.

"Anything else?"

"No, thank you, I'm all sorted."

"Alright."

"Alright."

She heard him walk back out.

She pulled the petticoat over her head, and tied its waist strings herself. It was a bit long, but not so much that it would drag terribly.

Finally, she slipped on the aubergine dress.

Like everything else, it was baggy in the bust and ribs. A bit of wand work brought it more or less into line, though it was no more effective than the under-things were at covering the baked goods.

She was about to walk outside, when she remembered about her hair.

She spelled a patch of wall into a mirror-like shine, and used every binding and braiding spell she'd learned in the girls' dormitories at Hogwarts to pull her curls into a forcibly contained updo, wrapped about with a pair of braids she'd have been proud to show off to Fleur Weasley. She Transfigured a length of string she found hanging from a nail in the crumbling wooden window frame into a narrow gold ribbon, wound it around her head, and pinned it in place with a sticking spell. There were still curls flying loose at the nape of her neck and around her face, but it would have to do.

The shoes weren't appropriate to the period, but her feet were adequately covered by the hem of her dress. She'd simply have to avoid big kicks, or playing lacrosse.

She gathered up her work clothes and bra into a bundle, vanished it all, slipped on her shoes, and went outside to find Draco.

"How did you make out?" she asked, rounding the corner.

She pulled up short.

He was fussing with the ends of a white neckcloth that wrapped several times around his neck, and stopped when she came into view.

"How do you look like that," she gestured at him, "and I look like a village bakery window at Christmas?"

He wore a pair of tight, off-white trousers that put the muscles he kept honed in the ultra-competitive interoffice Quidditch league on display, and a pair of softly shining black knee-high boots.

There was a fussy-looking shirt arrangement with a high neck and a tie that Hermione was impressed he'd managed to figure out without any help. He wore a black tail coat that pulled in smartly at the waist.

Even his hair flopped dashingly.

It was all but guaranteed that every one of the loudly laughing aunts at the wedding was going to refer to him as a "fine figure of a man".

"Alright, then," she said. "Are you ready?"

"Yes, I am. You look…" he paused, and considered his words. "Prepared, Granger."

"Oh. Well, thank you," she said. "Shall we?"

"Alright," he said, clearing his throat.

They Apparated to a point at the side of the house, away from the eyes of the wedding guests, but close enough to walk around the side of the house along one of the garden paths and join the rest of the party without attracting any attention.

"Right," said Hermione, readying herself. "Follow my lead."

"In what sense?" asked Draco.

"In the sense of Regency-era decorum, Malfoy. This isn't a meal at the Ministry lunch counter, where you can kick back with a bacon sarnie and a milky tea and talk about all your _weekend_ _girls_ with Blaise. We'll need to decide..._damn it_, Malfoy!"

Before she'd finished speaking, Draco had walked off and rounded the corner without her.

She bustled after him holding up her skirts, then remembered her shoes, and hastily lowered the hem to the ground.

The sun was beginning to climb into position overhead, and the air in the gardens was warm and thick with the fragrance of wisteria. Draco had found a flute of champagne, and was leaning in a corner like one of lads down at the pub.

"Did you get one of those for me?" she asked.

"Clearly not. Hello there," he said to a passing House-elf, who was carrying a tray dotted with little basket-shaped pastries with some kind of ham and egg-looking filling. "Yes, thank you. Just stand there for a moment." The House-elf did as it was told, and Draco ate five of the baskets before he waved the elf off.

Hermione grabbed a flute of champagne from a passing tray. She was suddenly aware of how thirsty she was, having spent nearly an hour running about the countryside. She downed the entire glass, and grabbed another one off the same elf.

"That fellow over there has prosciutto rolls," he said, and moved off the wall in pursuit.

Hermione shuffled after him, dragging her hem, and feeling the warmth of the late morning, finished the second glass of champagne.

"These are delicious, try one," said Draco, handing her a rolled packet of ham. "They're setting up a buffet over there," he said, pointing at a long cloth-covered table set close to the house, loaded with stacks of plates and a phalanx of covered dishes. "I wonder when they're going to cut the cake?"

"As I was saying, Malfoy," Hermione began again, "I'd wager that I've read far more than you have about this era, and its values and conventions. You ought to let me do the talking."

"Ought I?" he said, archly. "You know more than I do about expected behavior in the upper echelons of the Wizarding elite?"

"I'm sure you're the expert on whatever debauches the elite are getting up to in 2004, but this isn't then, and you can't go about here just _being yourself _and not make people suspicious."

He drained his glass of champagne. "Watch me."

For the next few minutes, they stood silently, eating and drinking whatever happened to walk by. Hermione bit anxiously at a spear of asparagus wrapped in bacon, feeling exposed and turning over possibilities in her head. They needed to come up with a plan: somewhere to stay, a way to eat, money, even- Merlin where would they come up with it if they needed it?- then the space and tools to repair the Time Turner, the calculations for their return...and where had the bloody snuff box gone?

The wheels of her mind were churning away furiously when they were accosted.

"Hullo, hullo, _hullo _!"

Draco startled so badly he nearly dropped his bacon.

The man approaching them was at the same time very small, and very large.

He was no more than five feet three inches tall, and built like a rhinoceros who had taken up long distance running. He was a bizarre mixture of leanness and heft, with heavy, muscular legs and a barrel chest, but everything about him suggested that he had the ability to gambol across the lawn like a gazelle if he wished. He had voluminous, curly salt and pepper hair, cropped to resemble a sea of churning waves rising from his smooth forehead, and a thick beard and mustache, nearly black but shot through with grey, with a thick stripe of white on the right side of his chin, and leonine sideburns framing jocular pink cheeks. There were sprightly, intelligent blue eyes beneath a pair of patrician eyebrows, the left of which was bisected by a white band of scar tissue.

He seemed like the sort of person who would survive a solo Antarctic expedition on limited rations, then turn back round for another go.

"Welcome!" he shouted politely. "Have you tried the oysters?"

Draco stood smartly at attention, Hermione noticed, seemingly shocked into awe, but rallied, and bowed slightly in polite acknowledgement.

"Indeed. They're phenomenal," said Draco.

"Quite so!" said the man. "Glad you could make it! Please forgive me for taking the liberty, but I don't believe we've been introduced. Sir Longbottom," he said, clicking his heels together and giving them a short, martial nod.

"_Sir _Longbottom," repeated Hermione in disbelief.

"Indeed! And may I ask who the two of you are?"

"Granger," Hermione said before Draco could speak.

"This is Mr. _Granger_," she continued, gesturing toward Draco.

She watched as a hot maroon flush slowly rose from the base of Draco's neck and up his face like water filling a tub.

"Splendid! Well done, Mr. Granger," Longbottom said for no apparent reason.

"Thank you," said Draco. He wrapped one arm around Hermione's shoulders and squeezed her with a great deal more pressure than was needed. "And this is my…"

"Sister," interjected Hermione.

"...wife," finished Draco.

Draco looked down at Hermione and smiled at her like a person capable of killing for fun.

"I'm his..." began Hermione.

"Wife."

"...sister."

He squeezed her arm again, and she shifted to stand, casually, with her full weight on his left foot.

"This is my..."

"Sister."

"My sister-wife. She is my sister, who is like a wife to me," he finished.

She curtsied, right foot hooked behind her left, with a short bob and a dip of the head, in the way that she'd learnt in the one year of ballet class she'd taken aged four. She studiously kept her hem on the ground as she clutched her skirts.

"She's called Miss _Granger_, because Granger is _our _name. Her name, and mine as well," said Draco. His smile promised a precise and calculated revenge.

"Wouldn't there have been so many questions if you had some other name?" said Hermione, laughing lightly up into his face.

"Well, one can't be too attached to one's name, can one," said Draco. "One might run around forcing it on other people."

"Ah! The devotion of a sister, keeping her brother's home for him until he's able to marry, well done!" said Longbottom. Hermione's mouth dropped open, and Draco pinched her upper arm, hard.

"_Granger_, you say?" Longbottom went on. Draco gave him a maudlin nod.

Longbottom was suddenly caught up in a fit of excitement. "Ho! Ho! Mr. Martin!" he boomed, turning around swiftly from one side to the next, searching for someone in the yard.

"Mr. Martin!" he shouted again, waving at a figure hunched in a chair.

The chair at first glance appeared to be stationary, but at Sir Longbottom's beckoning, it began to float slowly across the lawn, and Hermione realized it was floating, magicked to hover about two inches over the grass. The figure sitting in it had his hand on a sort of control knob, which he used to maneuver closer to Sir Longbottom, Draco and Hermione.

"Martin, you canny old fool, we have your Granfields right here!" said Longbottom.

Mr. Martin moved closer.

He was impossibly old, and thin, and appeared to be held in a sort of suspended collapse.

Sitting on his wicker floating chair, lined with a snowy sheepskin, he was wrapped in a crisply folded origami packet of Tartan blankets in defiance of the warmth of the day. Wisps of white hair escaped from beneath the rolled edge of a knit cap in stripes of yellow, red, blue, and olive green, which had a bombastic duplicate-stitch H embroidered in shining gold yarn at the front, and he wore a pair of spectacles with thick lenses and huge, round tortoiseshell frames that made his eyes look comically large. He had an enormous Barbie-pink peony boutonniere pinned to the outermost layer of his Tartan wrapping.

His eyes were black.

Or rather, they were an indeterminate hazel color, but his pupils were dilated so wide that the irises retreated into a footnote. They were as unclouded and sharp as a youth's, and the look in them was at once piercingly attentive and wandering, like someone tracking a single ant going about its business in a colony of millions, and there was also a quality of shininess to them, not a superficial gloss, but an interior sparkle, as though if you peered into the black of his pupils you'd find the vast starlit stage of the universe and not the dim rear walls of his eyeballs. He was profoundly wrinkled, but his skin had a healthy color and vague translucency that suggested he had stayed out of the sun most of his life, or at least used an effective sunscreen daily. The totality of the impression was of a frail vivacity, a study in contrasts that sat in pleasing complement to Sir Longbottom's stout sprightliness.

Hermione could see how they would be friends.

Mr. Martin looked at Hermione and Draco with his penetrating, distracted gaze.

"You were right, Martin, after all! Your cousins _have _come! They're _Grangers _, Martin!" said Longbottom, yelling down Mr. Martin's ear and slapping him on the shoulder gamely. He turned back to Draco and Hermione. "He's been telling us all about the imminent arrival of his cousins, the Granfields, the Greshams, the Granthams, the Greys, even the Griffiths. Welsh! Ho!" He slapped Mr. Martin once more. "We've been putting it down to one of his flights, and now here you are! Grangers!"

Mr. Martin craned his twiggy neck up at Draco and Hermione, and smiled, showing a mouth of healthy, well-kept teeth.

"Granger!" he said. His voice sounded thin and dry, but pleasing, like the rasp of a saw being drawn through the width of a pine board on a summer afternoon. "_ Granger! _" he said again, this time to Longbottom. He turned back to Draco and Hermione. "What ho!" He smiled, then pinned Draco with his eyes. "A Frenchman," he whispered, tapping the point of a withered finger against the side of his nose. "I'll drop it in the mail," he concluded, sitting back and closing his eyes.

Draco sipped at his third glass of champagne.

"I'll keep an eye out for it," he said to Mr. Martin, then under his breath to Hermione, "I don't know who this is, but I'm extremely fond of him."

"Will you be staying with Mr. Martin at Twiggybroke, or…?" Sir Longbottom asked.

"We will absolutely be staying with Mr. Martin at _Twiggybroke_," said Hermione. She tugged stealthily at the top of one of her baggy stockings. "Unless my brother Mr. Granger has alternative plans."

Draco looked at her out of the corner of his eye.

"I don't," he conceded.

"Splendid! Splendid!" shouted Longbottom. "You'll dine with us at the Hall. Nightly! Or as often as we may have you. I brook no dissent, excepting that from my good Lady Longbottom, so don't begin to think of it."

Draco nodded genteelly and raised his glass of champagne lightly at Longbottom.

Hermione had to own that there was a certain quality of manner that Draco possessed that carried him through as though he belonged. Which, give or take 200 years, she supposed he did. He was elegant, easy, while she was hiking up her stockings and trying to keep her shoes covered.

Longbottom ran them round the party and introduced them to absolutely everyone.

There was Lady Longbottom, tall, cool, and shockingly beautiful, who seemed distracted by the goings on of the wedding, and then a series of names Hermione knew from Hogwarts: Averys, Notts, and more than a few Parkinsons, plus a set of actual Greshams, a dozen other family names Hemione forgot after her fourth glass of champagne, and a trio of Walters who looked as red and distressed as if they'd never been outside in the sun in their lives.

Longbottom had just married off his eldest child and only son, a tall youth with cheerful brown curls, attractive thick eyelashes and a sturdy set to his shoulders, whose family referred to him as Young Tom. Hermione asked, and learned that he'd been called Thomas after his father, who was called Thomas after _his _father, and so forth back three generations, and that the current Sir Longbottom was familiarly called Old Tom. The young Mr. Longbottom spent his wedding luncheon wandering about the grounds next to his lovely bride, an olive-skinned girl with black hair and a placid face, looking completely dazed.

They were set, Longbottom told Draco and Hermione, to live in a cottage that Longbottom had recently built on the other side of the woods to the east of the house, and would raise their family there until each one of the Longbottom daughters were married off and sent away to establishments of their own.

There were four of these, increasing in age and size in perfect form like a set of Russian nesting dolls, from the youngest at seventeen to the eldest at twenty, all of them built like track runners, trim and pink-cheeked, with great piles of honeyed blonde curls and sparkling laughs. They all had velveteen alto voices, and slightly oversized teeth that managed to bring to mind horses, but in a compellingly specific way that made one mentally associate them with glossy coats, excellent health and breathtaking top land speeds. Every last one of them had a surpassingly lovely and substantial set of dinner rolls.

They were extremely beautiful.

Hermione stood beside one of the middle girls, the one with deep brown eyes framed by lush fans of long, dark brown lashes, and held onto a plate of roast potatoes and roast beef with one hand, and fiddled with the tops of her stockings with the other.

Draco was experiencing bliss.

He had a plate piled high with food, which he'd refilled twice from the dishes on the buffet table, and was holding onto a glass of champagne. By now he was warm as toast with the latter, and fed and slightly overwatered, he had transformed into a looser, easier, scandalously flirtatious version of himself.

Hermione despised him.

"So who is it you said you were visiting tomorrow, Miss Cressida?" he said, lifting an eyebrow and aiming his disarmingly lopsided grin at the witch standing next to Hermione.

"Oh, no one of consequence," Cressida replied, and the subsequent blush made her look like she'd been doing wind sprints, starting at the gazebo, ending at the abandoned cottage at the edge of the woods, and back again.

"Cressy, you liar, tell Mr. Granger," said the next youngest sister, a girl of eighteen with bright hazel eyes, "that we're calling on the Averys, because Mr. William Avery is home from Oxford tomorrow morning." She turned to Draco and arched an eyebrow at him. "Willie Avery is Cressy's beau."

"Penelope," scolded the eldest, a witch named Isadora who was slightly taller and more finely built than her sisters, "please." She also turned to Draco, and smiled at him in such a mild and genuinely embarrassed way that it made Hermione's lips twitch.

"May we call on you at Twiggybroke Cottage in the morning?" continued Isadora. "We often walk to the Averys', and we would be exceedingly pleased if you," she turned to Hermione, "and Miss Granger would join us."

"We'd be delighted," said Draco. He'd ginned up his native toff accent into its plummiest heights, and Hermione desperately wanted to stand on his foot again.

"You can help me over the stiles," said the youngest Longbottom girl, "although I dare say you'll need to help us all." She looked around at her pink-cheeked sisters and finished with a giggle.

Hermione swigged the last of her most recent glass of champagne.

"Cassandra," tsked Isadora, "Mr. Granger, please excuse my sisters. It's been an exciting day for us all."

"No excuses need to be made, Miss Izzy," said Draco, smiling that _damned _smile of his again. Isadora's eyes flashed and she turned her head away demurely, while Hermione scratched angrily at her stocking cuff.

"Please, will you excuse me and my brother for a moment," said Hermione. Then, to Draco, she whispered, "I believe they're about to cut the cake."

"Where?" asked Draco, turning around to look.

"Over _there_," she said, looking at him meaningfully and tilting her head toward the side of the house.

She set down her glass and plate on a nearby cafe table, took his from him, grabbed his elbow, and dragged him around the corner of the house.

"Where's the cake? You said cake, Granger," said Draco, warningly. "And now you've taken my food."

"You cannot seduce a _single _one of Neville Longbottom's great, great, great, great, great, great aunts," she hissed, pointing a finger into his smirking face. "I _forbid _it."

He leaned against the wall with a bit of a drunken crash that he covered well, and shoved his hands in his pockets. Hermione wasn't sure if early 19th century men's trousers even had pockets, but his did.

"What makes you think I'm seducing anyone, Granger?" he asked.

She paused.

"Your...well, your _hair_, for starters, and your _mouth_, Malfoy, you can't do those things with your mouth," she sputtered.

"What _can _I do with my mouth?" he asked, and she hated the way his eyes glinted, and hated the way she felt so damned _itchy _when they did. She hitched up her dress a bit and wafted some air up under her petticoat.

"Don't do _anything _with your mouth," she fumed, "and especially don't smile. Not in the way that you do."

"Why not?" he asked her, wobbling on his feet, catching himself, then raising his _blasted _eyebrow.

"Because they're _teenagers_," she whisper-shouted, "three quarters of them, anyway, and this is 1804. _Don't _look at me like that. The fact that they're all legally able to consent in this era, and yes, the eldest three in ours as well, doesn't change a single thing. You can't marry them, for obvious reasons, and anything else, and I do mean _anything _else, would ruin them. Completely. Irrevocably. I discreetly asked a House-elf a few moments ago, and we are exactly 200 years in the past. You are not debauching a single witch, Malfoy. Not a _single _witch!"

His smile grew suddenly louche and dangerous. Hermione's breath hitched.

"Not a _single one_, Granger?" he said quietly, and tipped his head back. "What if I behave myself? What if I'm very, _very _good?"

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it again.

"And what if," he nearly whispered, "it turns out I can't help myself?"

Hermione shoved a finger into his chest.

"If you lay a _finger _on one of those Longbottom girls, I swear to you, I will end you in this timeline and any other that I'm able to reach."

Draco held his hands up in surrender.

"Not a finger, Granger," he smirked. "Now, may I please have my roast back?"

Hermione stomped away from him. As she began to round the corner back into the rear gardens, she suddenly stopped.

Draco slammed into her from behind.

"What? Are they out of cake?" he asked.

"It's there. It's looking at us," whispered Hermione.

Twenty feet away at the edge of the garden was the gift table, piled high with boxes and fabric bags dressed in brightly colored ribbons. There, tucked behind several boxes, in a place they couldn't have seen before that moment, was the snuff box.

Its vacant, metal eyes seemed to be staring at them from its indeterminate head.

"Don't move," whispered Hermione.

Draco stood as still as a fairly intoxicated statue.

"What do we do?" he asked.

"I don't know," she said.

"Do you think we can just grab it?" he asked. "There's not a working Time Turner around to zap us back to 1602."

"I don't _know _," she repeated, beginning to sound frustrated. "We need time to think. We shouldn't do anything without a plan."

"It's on the gift table, is it not?" said Draco. "So it must be going home with Young Tom and Mrs. Longbottom. Their cottage is nearby, can't we just...intercept it there, later?"

Hermione nodded.

"That makes sense," she said. She scrunched up her eyes in thought. "You handled it without incident until it reached the lab. It stands to reason that it needs a Time Turner to do whatever it is that it does. If it zaps anyone, we'll certainly hear it. It's likely that it will be safely taken away with the rest of the gifts. We'll surely be invited to dine with Mr. and Mrs. Longbottom soon," she continued, "If not, I believe I can, even _should_, call on Mrs. Longbottom in her new home now that we've been introduced. I can find out where she keeps it, and then we can decide how to proceed."

"Alright."

"Alright."

They sidled carefully around the corner of the house, keeping the snuff box in view, until they were well out into the garden.

Cake was being sliced and handed out, and after Draco cleared the remains of his third plate of food and finished off yet another glass of champagne, Hermione pulled him over to stand next to their cousin Mr. Martin and eat slices of a delicate vanilla sponge with a light buttercream and fresh strawberries.

"Whipped!" said Mr. Martin, taking a large bite of his cake and winking his starlight eye at Draco. "Mmm."

"Indeed, cousin," said Draco, patting Mr. Martin's arm.

The afternoon wore on, happily decadent and soaked in champagne, until guests began to Floo and Apparate home. Draco and Hermione found themselves giving their complements to a pleasantly soused and nap-ready Sir Longbottom, his exhausted wife, and their giggling daughters, and weaving behind Mr. Martin's floating chair along a wide path through the forest.

Twiggybroke Cottage was settled at the bottom of an open glen, a sun-dappled, benign place alive with the chirping and calling of birds and the fluttering of white moths, and it sat next to a clear, tinkling brook spanned by a little moss-covered wooden bridge, painted robin's egg blue to match the trim of the house.

The house itself was made of yellowish stone, with roof peaks covered in a patchwork of slate in tones of copper and umber, and crowned by the points of several chimneys. Ivy clung like a green mask to its forward faces. It was reached by an arched wooden gate set into a stone wall at the end of the lane, and a mossy flag path led to its blue-painted front door.

Someone had built a wooden ramp from the flag path up to the front door, and Mr. Martin guided his chair up the ramp, and with a wave of a short applewood wand that he pulled out from the depths of his wrappers, the door opened, and he glided through. Draco and Hermione followed.

The inside of the cottage was lined almost entirely with books.

There were other details, of course, like its low, black-beamed ceiling, the deep sofas in jewel-toned blue velvet littered with embroidered cushions, and the fire briskly crackling away in the hearth.

But all that Hermione could see was the extensive library contained within the modest walls of Twiggybroke.

"What's this, then?" said a gruff voice.

Hermione broke away from her examination of the nearest shelf, and saw that Mr. Martin had guided his chair up to one of two armchairs close to the fire, and was being assisted into it from his floating chair by a House-elf wearing a pair of corduroy breeches, a woven plaid shirt, and a cream-colored cable-knit cardigan. He had a pair of gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles perched on his nose, and an enormous pair of sheepskin slippers on his wide feet.

"Grangers!" said Mr. Martin. He gave Draco and Hermione an enormous smile, settled himself back into the armchair and closed his eyes. The House-elf didn't tear his gaze away from Draco and Hermione as he took the steering control of Mr. Martin's floating chair between his fingers and guided the chair into an out of the way spot in the corner. He tapped it with a finger, and the chair lowered to the floor, and seemed to shut down.

He then moved back to Mr. Martin, and began to refold the Tartan wraps into their former crisp arrangement.

"He's tired. Did you let him eat too much cake?" the elf asked them. "He's not supposed to have too much cake."

Draco's head tilted back and then jerked forward as his eyes regained their focus.

"The cake," he said, bending in the breezeless room like a stalk of wheat, "was positively _erotic_."

"Mmm," grunted the elf.

He stood and stared at the two of them with his hands in his corduroy pockets.

"His _cousins_," he said, sarcastically, chewing over the word. Hermione could practically see the air quotes he wasn't making. "I thought you were called Greenwood."

"So did apparently everyone else," said Draco. "But we're Graaangers." He expanded the A like it explained a whole slew of things.

"Grangers. Alright. You staying here?" said the elf.

"We are, yes. With our _cousin_, Mr. Martin," slurred Draco. "So the blondes," he made a gesture at around Cressida Longbottom's height, "can visit us in the morning. And then as soon as we can, we'll fetch the _box._ And _then_," he swirled both hands around one another in the air in front of himself, "Pppssccchhewww." He lifted an eyebrow conspiratorially.

The elf turned to Hermione.

"Martin's not to be troubled. You trouble Martin, you trouble me."

"Of course, Mr…?"

"Just Grix. I keep a quiet, orderly house. Understood?" said the elf. He looked pointedly at Draco.

"Yes, Mr. Grix," said Hermione.

"I'll show you to your rooms," Grix said, and pushed past them down a narrow hallway.

At the end of the hall was a small bathroom, and a pair of bedrooms with neatly made beds. Grix turned to the right, and opened a very narrow door onto a steep flight of unlit stairs. He hauled his thin body up the stairs, and Hermione and Draco followed him. There was a wooden rail set into the wall, and Draco clung to it with both hands as he went up.

At the top of the stairs was a very small, dark landing, with two closed doors directly facing one another.

Grix opened the door to the right, and entered.

It was an extremely tidy bedroom, and when Grix crossed the floor and opened the interior shutters, it flooded with light.

It had a four-poster bed made up with clean blue and white striped linens, feather pillows plumped and straight and stacked two high.

"I do the beds in the morning after breakfast, so be out of 'em," said Grix. "I'll do the tea in," he pulled a pocket watch out of his cardigan pocket, "another two hours, then breakfast is at seven. Prompt," he finished. "You," he pointed at Draco, "are to behave yourself. I don't have these great big floppers for no reason," he said, slapping at one of his enormous ears.

As he walked out of the room, Draco walked in, and fell face-first onto the bed.

The second door on the landing opened to another bedroom, and the light that came in at the window once the shutters were open was of a warmer quality than in the first. The ceiling was also angled, and the bed was similar, wooden and four-postered, but it was made up with linens in a washed ivory cotton with pale pink flowers. There was a dressing table set with a basin and pitcher, a narrow desk with a quill and ink pot, a pair of armchairs next to a small hearth, and a bookcase holding a neat little library of its own.

Grix looked at Hermione shrewdly.

"The shoes are wrong," he said.

Hermione bristled.

"Pardon me?" she asked.

"You heard me," he said. "There's a girl at the village, I'll send for her."

With that, the elf backed out of the room, and pulled the door shut after him.

Hermione sat on the edge of the bed.

There was a white porcelain vase at the window ledge, and as she watched, it filled with a clutch of pale pink roses mixed with sprays of lavender.

House-elf magic.

Across the landing, on the other side of two closed doors, Draco had begun to snore.


	3. Chapter 3: The Walk

In the glen, the sunlight streamed warm and unhurried through the beech trees, and the little brook trickled amiably in its bed.

Draco stood at the bottom of the ramp from the front door of the cottage, boots shining, holding out his arm.

His mouth quivered at the corner.

"Not a word," Hermione said through her teeth as she approached him.

"About what?" he asked.

"Don't be obtuse," she said. "I think it's what's expected. In any case, the wind blows my hair all over the place, I can't be spitting hair out of my mouth all morning. It's indelicate."

"It is," he agreed.

"Stop smiling," she hissed. "It's not as though your situation is any better."

She looked meaningfully at his cravat.  
"I'm not smiling," he said.

"I can see you smiling. You're doing it right now."

His mouth was held in a straight, tremulous line.

"Say it, then," she said.

"What's it to be: say it, or not a word?" he asked. "You can't have it both ways."

"I can have it however I want it, Malfoy," she said.

At that, he stopped trying to hide his smile.

"That may be true with just about anyone else, but I'm rather tricky, aren't I. I do think you ought to take my arm," he said.

She bristled.

"Pardon me, I don't need to hold onto your arm," she said.

"I'm sure that's true, but I'm standing here with it out, and it looks odd that you won't."

"_You _look odd."

"Nice."

"_You're _nice."

One side of his mouth lifted.

"I certainly could be."

The look Hermione gave him was made of forged steel.

"Granger, I'm not the one that brought it up. Why the bee in your..."

"Don't...you..._ dare _."

He continued both smiling, and holding out his arm.

With an unnecessary degree of roughness to her grip, she took it.

Earlier that morning, Hermione had risen not long after the sun, and before she had a chance to browse beyond the first shelf of books in the bedroom, there was a quiet knock at her door.

"Come in," she said, and a witch entered the room.

She was young, perhaps around eighteen years old, short and very thin, with pale reddish hair pinned up in braids around her head, and a smattering of freckles across her cheeks. She had dark brown eyes, and pulled a large trunk behind her, spelled to hover over the ground at waist height.

Once she was inside, the girl maneuvered the trunk into a corner, pulled a wand out of her pocket, and sent the trunk gently to settle on the floor.

She turned to face Hermione.

"Good morning, ma'am," said the girl, giving her a short curtsy. "I've come about the clothes."

"The clothes?" asked Hermione.

"Yes, ma'am," said the girl. Then she took a breath, and launched herself into a slew of rapid speech.

"The greengrocer's lad brought a note round in the evening from Mr. Grix, saying as he'd got a witch staying at the cottage in need of an entire wardrobe, and might I come first thing in the morning with some things to wear, which he supposed correctly we'd have. Ann's been working up at the Parkinsons', and Miss Parkinson is so uncommonly generous with her old gowns, and with Ann having grown so much in the spring, and Katherine not far behind but not ready at present for the ones Ann's just cast off, we've several not currently in use." She turned and opened the trunk, and began rifling through a sea of fabric. "I've brought two morning dresses, and two walking dresses, and a spencer. Mr. Grix mentioned that you were in need of all of the underthings, as well as shoes, as you've lost your luggage, what a pity! He said you were just about Ann's size, before she grew in the spring, only a bit bigger in the bust, which isn't saying much, if I can say as much about my own sister, and he wasn't a bit wrong about that, was he!" She turned, and looked Hermione up and down with a smile. "We none of us know what would become of dear old funny Mr. Martin without Mr. Grix. He knows everything," she concluded.

Hermione didn't doubt that he did.

"Thank you," she said, after she'd absorbed some of the tsunami of information. "I'm Hermione. _Granger _," she added, in case that was a necessary part of introductions.

The girl curtsied again.

"Miss Granger," she said. "I'm Margaret McClure, from over in Market Hettlesham. Shall I help you to dress now?"

"Oh! I suppose...well, yes, thank you," Hermione said. It had been something of an ordeal dressing the day before. In the evening, she'd kept her aubergine gown on to go down to tea with Grix and Mr. Martin, which Draco had slept right through. When she'd gone up to her bedroom for the evening, she'd been able to remove her dress and petticoat without significant trouble, but had struggled to unknot herself from her stays. She'd ultimately resorted to pointing her wand at her back and slicing through the entire ladder of lacing rather than ask Grix for help, or, Merlin forbid, wake Draco and put herself in the position of asking him to undo her corset.

She'd slept comfortably in the chemise as a sort of night dress. She'd been grateful to discover sometime around 2 a.m. that they were past the chamber pot stage of history, at least in Magical households, or at least in this one, and her biggest concern had been bundling herself up and down the steep stairs to the indoor water closet without getting her legs tangled in more skirt than she was used to dealing with.

Hermione now submitted to having her chemise removed, and was quite successful in masking her own look of guilt when Margaret first saw, then openly stared at, her 21st century knickers.

They were one of Hermione's most comfortable pairs, in grey cotton, printed with tiny pink hearts and trimmed in pink cotton eyelet.

Hermione had debated with herself, and ultimately determined not to remove them, except when she took them off long enough to carefully and thoroughly Scourgify them before putting them back on again the night before.

"What are _those _?" asked Margaret.

Hermione felt herself flush.

"They're new," she said, quickly. Then she added, dubiously, "They're French."

Margaret shrugged, seeming to require no further explanation.

She helped Hermione into a fresh chemise, then fitted her with a corset that hugged her ribs and chest snugly before any adjustment. She loosened the bust and brought it into perfect alignment with her figure using the briefest flicks of her wand, and laced her into it with quick, practiced fingers.

Hermione was slightly alarmed to find her breasts rising even more aggressively beyond the bust line of the corset than they had the day before, like two over-leavened balls of dough.

"Is this normal?" she asked, looking meaningfully between Margaret and her decolletage.

Margaret laughed, her eyes pressed shut and her nose wrinkling.

"You look lovely, Miss Granger," she insisted. "A well-fitting undergarment will do wonders for your gods-given gifts."

"It's done outright miracles with them," muttered Hermione, pressing gingerly at her soaring flesh in a futile attempt to deflate it.

After the corset was secured, Margaret helped Hermione into a petticoat, this one with a bodice and shoulder straps, then held out a pair of stockings. Like the pair she wore the previous day, they were knitted in fine white silk, with delicate lacework at the openings.

Hermione slipped them on, then said, cautiously, "My stockings yesterday felt a bit _loose _. Is there something that might secure them a bit?" She was trying desperately to shroud her ignorance, but she had no idea whatsoever what technology women were using to hold up their socks.

"I've brought several sets of ribbons. Would you like my help in getting them on?" said Margaret.

Hermione gratefully accepted. While Margaret retrieved a set of pale pink satin ribbons from the trunk, Hermione sat down on the edge of her bed, and pulled up the skirts of her chemise and petticoat to the tops of her thighs.

Margaret kneeled on the floor between Hermione's knees, and tied one of the ribbons expertly around Hermione's right thigh, then picked up the second ribbon, and began to wrap it around Hermione's left.

It was at that moment that her bedroom door burst open.

"Granger, it's time to…"

Draco was wearing a similar suit to the one he had on the day before, only today his trousers were black. He wore the same shining black boots, a white shirt, and cravat, and he'd clearly cleaned himself up with some spellwork. He looked fresh and well rested, which Hermione imagined one must after a solid 13 or 14 hours of sleep, and his hair flopped about as suggestively as ever.

His gaze was glued to Hermione's exposed and open thighs, and Margaret kneeling between them.

There was a prolonged silence before he continued speaking.

"It's time to go down," he said, finally.

He looked up at Hermione's face.

"It's time to eat," he tried again.

He cleared his throat, and unclenched his fist from the doorknob.

"Come downstairs," he said, "for breakfast."

Hermione looked at him impassively.

For the first time, he seemed to be able to bring his full awareness to the third person in the room.

"You must be Granger's thigh maiden," he said to Margaret. He cleared his throat a second time. "Granger's garter girl. Hermione's, that is. She's my sister. Hello."

Margaret nodded her head.

"This is Miss Margaret McClure," Hermione said.

"Miss Margaret," he nodded.

"Have you been drinking already?" asked Hermione. "It's not even 7 o'clock."

"No, but I think I'll go and see about starting," he said.

He gave them both a slight bow, turned about smoothly, and jaunted down the stairs.

Hermione made her way after him a short while later.

Margaret had done Hermione's hair up, wrapped around with braids and a blue ribbon, and her curls loosely framed her face and tumbled at the nape of her neck in a way that looked significantly more intentional than it had on the previous day. She was dressed in a white cotton gown with a border of flowers embroidered in white thread, and her simple work flats had been replaced with a pair of short lace-up boots with pointed toes. Margaret had done some rapid spellwork on Hermione's face without asking, and Hermione suspected she was rosier in the cheeks and lips than usual.

Draco was seated at the table in the small dining room, and lifted his eyes to watch her enter the room without turning himself from the copy of the Daily Prophet he had spread open in front of him. At his place at the table was a bowl of what seemed to be porridge, and a tall glass containing some kind of thick, green liquid.

Hermione took an empty seat near the opposite end of the table, and tried to fold herself down in a way that minimized the hail-fellow-well-met extroversion of her bosom, while Mr. Martin guided himself to the head of the dining room table in his magical chair.

Grix followed shortly after, while bowls of porridge appeared in front of Hermione and Mr. Martin, followed by tall glasses of the green goop.

Hermione lifted the glass to her nose and sniffed. It smelled sweet and tropical.

"Is this a...:" she began.

"It is, in fact, a smoothie," said Draco, reabsorbed in his morning paper. "Banana, mango, and coconut, I believe, and then Mr. Grix here has blessed us with some added spinach."

"Oh! I had no idea smoothies were popular in the…" she stopped herself from saying "past", and looked over at Grix, who was looking right back at her over the tops of his little spectacles. "In the West Country," she finished.

"I don't know that they are," said Draco, picking up his cup, taking a whiff, and putting it back down. "This seems like a Twiggybroke Cottage speciality. I'm also entirely certain that the porridge has flax meal in it."

Hermione took a small bite of her porridge, and found the distinctive, nutty-oily flavor of ground flax. It had also been seasoned with what tasted like cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom, and there was a little dish of chopped walnuts on the table, one of shredded coconut, and a large bowl of blueberries.

Hermione poured herself a cup of tea from the pot set in the middle of the table, and discovered that it was a clear, bright green, and smelled grassy and astringent. There was no sugar or milk available.

She doctored her oats up with generous spoonfuls of everything available, and dug in.

Martin sat at the head of the table, closing his eyes in enjoyment with each spoonful of porridge.

Draco watched them both eat.

"Well. I'm glad the two if you are satisfied with the morning repast," he said.

"Thank you, Mr. Grix," said Hermione, "for seeing about my wardrobe. Miss Margaret was indispensable. It was very thoughtful of you."

Grix grunted an acknowledgement.

"That's alright," he said, gruffly. "We can't have you running about Wiltshire in the altogether."

Draco lifted his newspaper to cover his face, and Hermione heard him snort.

"No, I suppose that wouldn't do," she said.

Grix stood to pour Martin a cup of green tea, and then returned to his place at the table, to Martin's right.

"You're planning an outing this morning, I imagine," said Grix. He had heaped his bowl of oats with walnuts, and then took a large handful of blueberries, and began popping them into his mouth one at a time.

Hermione looked at Draco.

"I believe so," she said. "The Longbottom girls said that they'd call this morning, something about taking a walk to the Averys'?"

Grix nodded.

"That'll keep you out of Martin's hair for long enough. Martin goes out for air himself in the morning, and then he comes in for his reading, and takes his rest while I write up his notes. It's a quiet period, and one I expect you two can keep clear of."

He turned to Martin, and patted his right hand.

"Y'alright, Martin?" he said, loudly.

Mr. Martin looked to Grix with his large, shining owl eyes, then picked up his cup of smoothie, took a deep drink of it, and set the glass back down. He had a thin line of green mustache over his lip. "Fiber," he said, and patted Grix's hand back.

"That's right, old chap," said Grix, who leaned over and waved the mustache magically away. "Keep it all moving."

Draco turned the page of his newspaper, and straightened it with a snap.

After breakfast, and before the Longbottom girls arrived, Hermione took a longer look around the shelves of books surrounding the sitting room.

Draco came to stand next to her, leaned against one of the shelves, and pretended to take a serious interest in a volume on Chinese aquatic plants, written in Chinese.

"Where's the Time Turner?" he said, quietly, without looking up at Hermione. Grix was too busy wrapping up Martin in his complicated packet of blankets to pay them any mind.

She coughed lightly.

"It's safe," she answered.

'Safe _where _?" he asked. "We need to make a plan for its repair, and we are absolutely not letting it out of our possession. It doesn't look like you have any pockets in that thing." He gestured at her gown with his book.

"It's on my person," she said, irritatedly. "You don't need to fret about it."

"Oh, but I am fretting about our only means of making it back to our..." he looked over his shoulder at Grix and Mr. Martin, and lowered his voice. "To _our time _. I'm not sure that you ought to be trusted with it."

Hermione turned bright pink with a rapid onset bout of rage.

"You're not sure that _I _..." she began, hotly, leaning towards him. She stopped, and closed up her mouth. "Pardon me, Malfoy," she began again, "but in consideration of the fact that I'm the only time traveler in this blasted century who wasn't too concerned with the _line of my trousers _to have a Time Turner on my person in an active laboratory, I can't see how my storage of that object is any of your concern. What you ought to be thinking about is how we're going to get ahold of the proper tools to fix it."

He narrowed his eyes, and looked her up and down. His gaze ended where her upthrust globes cheered in bonhomie over the rim of her bodice.

"You've got it down there, haven't you."

She glanced straight down into the shadowy depths of her cleavage.

"Even if I did, it wouldn't be any of your bloody business, Malfoy," she shot at him.

"Oh, it would be my business," he said. "You've made them entirely my business."

"'Them'? Don't you mean 'it'?"

"No, I don't believe that I do."

He took a single step in her direction.

"I'm keeping an eye on you," he said, narrowing his eyes at her decolletage.

"Are you speaking to my-" Hermione began.

Before she could finish her thought, the laughter of four women came ringing down the pathway through the trees and entered the cottage at the open front window.

There was a well-traveled footpath that followed the course of the stream along the bottom of the wood, and once assembled, the party made its way along it, two abreast.

The four Longbottom sisters had arrived, exchanged the necessary pleasantries with Mr. Martin and Grix, and swiftly moved off with Hermione and Draco as though the pair of them comprised a shiny new plaything that they were eager to show off around the neighborhood.

Hermione had made it a priority to break from Draco's arm early in the walk, and she was quickly replaced at his side by the eager Cassandra, the vivacious and outspoken youngest Longbottom sister. Behind them walked Cressida and Penelope, the former watching Cassadra and Draco with a keen eye, and the latter walking with a light step and carefully avoiding damp ground. Hermione and the eldest sister, Isadora, took up the rear of the group, and Hermione soon found herself in easy conversation with the young woman.

"I'm grateful to you and your brother for joining us this morning," said Isadora. "Company can be so invariable in the country, and we've all been anxious to get to know the Grangers," she smiled. "The famous cousins of Mr. Martin have been highly anticipated."

Hermione looked away uncomfortably. It was bad enough to be stared down by the shrewd Grix at the breakfast table, but furthering the deception they'd deployed with the Longbottom family felt on the verge of becoming an immoral act, no matter the validity of their reasons for doing so. They were kind-hearted, good-natured girls, and even worse, they all appeared to be already quite fond of both Hermione and Draco.  
Hermione was determined to make their stay in the 19th century brief, and to be impeccable guests while they were there.

"I'm sure we're very happy for the connection," said Hermione, turning over the speech patterns of every BBC period drama she'd ever watched in her mind.

Isadora took Hermione's arm, and smiled at her.

She was wearing a dress in a pale, patterned cotton, modestly covering her arms, and revealing less cleavage than Hermione's. She wore her loose golden curls piled on her head, and then covered them with a deep pink bonnet. A knitted shawl in cream colored wool was wrapped around her shoulders.

The most significant change from the day prior was the inclusion of a pair of round, gold-rimmed spectacles that magnified her hazel eyes, which were large to begin with, and framed by dense, dark brown eyelashes. She had beautifully arched brows, and the strong features shared by all of the Longbottom sisters that gave them a classical quality, as though they had been carved from marble to memorialize the preferred proportions of the Greeks. She was a few centimeters taller than Hermione, and walked with the easy gait of someone who is comfortable in their own skin.

"I've been entreated by my father to invite you and Mr. Granger to dine with us at the Hall this evening, along with Mr. Martin and Mr. Grix," said Isadora. She tilted her head conspiratorially. "I'm afraid if you decline, you'll have my father at the door of the cottage, demanding an explanation."

She smiled again, her expression open and infused with easy warmth.

"Of course! We'd be delighted," Hermione said. "I can't speak for Mr. Martin or Mr. Grix, however." She thought about Grix's apparent concern with the nutrient density and fiber content of his and Mr. Martin's diet. "They may be inclined to dine in the cottage tonight."

"Of course," said Isadora. "My father has tried to tempt Mr. Grix to our table for as long as I can remember, and has yet to succeed."

"You might try a vegan menu," muttered Hermione.

"Pardon?" said Isadora.

"Nothing. Do you often walk to the Averys'?" asked Hermione quickly.

"Indeed! Nearly every day, in the summer. Cressida especially…" she trailed off, and looked away, then began again carefully. "We've all known William Avery from infancy. He was our constant companion in these woods when we were children barely able to mount brooms, and then he and Cressida were together in Ravenclaw House."

Hermione looked at Isadora in surprise.

Of course they'd been at Hogwarts.

"And you, Miss Longbottom? Which House were you Sorted into?" asked Hermione.

The path began to climb slightly, and curve to the left.

"Hufflepuff," said Isadora. "All of us sisters were in different Houses, which irritated Father and Mother to no end. Cressida was in Ravenclaw, my sister Penelope was in Slytherin House, like our mother, and my sister Cassandra is as decided a Gryffindor as I've ever known, besides my father."

Hermione watched as Cassandra beamed up at Draco, and noted the bold, unmasked quality of her gaze. She even walked with absolute certainty, giving her steps an energetic, athletic spring that contrasted with Draco's own, always elegant, movements.

Isadora followed Hermione's line of sight.

"My sister doesn't intend to flirt," she said, frowning, "but she's a good natured, affectionate girl, and hasn't learned how to guard herself."

Hermione watched Draco carefully. He was attentive, easy and smiling.

She realized some time after the war that he'd changed, but it had come on gradually, and she'd been too close to it to notice immediately.

They'd been working side by side for two years before she realized that he was no longer constantly scowling, but rather more frequently fighting down a half smile, as though she was an unending source of entertainment to him.

It enraged her, which only seemed to make it worse.

But where he was always looking to spar with Hermione, always ready to poke and prod her into irritation, he was uniformly charming with other women.

Hermione watched as Draco tipped his head back in laughter at something Cassandra said, and saw Cassandra clutch his arm in return.

The path curved upward, and then opened out of the forest onto rolling jewel-green fields, boxed in by hedgerows.

They followed its now straight course between the fields, still two abreast, until they came to a stile in the path.

Draco offered Cassandra his hand.

As she clutched her skirts, lifting them demurely, he guided her over the two steps on the near side, across the top of the gate, leapt over the fence himself, then helped her down the two steps on the far side, where he lifted her at the waist and set her down. He crossed back again to offer first Penelope, and then Cressida, the same assistance. As he lifted Cressida down, Hermione noticed a distinct flush to her cheeks.

Isadora smiled with something like embarrassment toward Hermione, but submitted to Draco's attention with the same sanguine and gratified acceptance as her sisters, so that Hermione was the last to remain on the near side of the stile.

Draco made a quick leap back to Hermione's side of the fence, and as she approached the steps, held out his hand, and winked at her.

Hermione stiffened.

"I think I can get myself over a fence, Malfoy," she said under her breath.

"Can you, though? You have rather a lot of skirt there, and you're more in the habit of wearing those trousers you like so much," he replied quietly, still holding out his hand.

"Of course I can manage," she said, swatting away his hand, and hitching up her skirts. "And this is a perfect example of why trousers are the superior garment, especially ones with some stretch built in. I could run a marathon directly from leaving the Ministry if I had to."

He looked at her doubtfully, then with a shrug, he sprang over the steps of the stile, and stood facing her from the other side.

Hermione doubted it was ladylike, but as she had no intention of putting down roots in the nineteenth century, so no need to preserve her reputation, she hiked up her skirts to above the knee, clutched the layers of fabric in one hand, and used the other to pull herself to standing on the lowest step of the stile.

It was a narrow plank of wood, but Hermione wasn't a dismal athlete as long as broomsticks weren't involved, and she was able, admittedly not without some awkwardness, to advance to the second step, then maneuver over the top of the gate.

On the other side, boldened by watching Draco standing useless below her, she stepped confidently across the tallest step, then moved to drop down to the lower.

But her narrow boots, with their slick soles and little heel at the back, failed to cooperate. As her right foot slipped and her ankle turned to the side, she flung her arms out to counterbalance the tipping caused by the misstep, dropped her skirts, and then lost her balance completely and went tumbling off the bottom step of the stile.

She felt her gut lurch, and fully expected Draco to let her go ass over teakettle, then laugh at her.

Instead, her flailing arms found purchase around his shoulders as he stepped into her fall. He wrapped one arm behind her shoulder blades, and with the other caught the back of her knees.

She'd listened to enough of the gossip in the Ministry cafeteria to be well aware that virtually every witch between the ages of 18 and 135 in the office was able to appreciate Draco Malfoy's form, history as a less than enthusiastic Death Eater or no, corded with the rangy musculature of an active recreational Seeker. He'd also taken up long-distance broom racing, which, Hermione was told, was excellent for building strong leg muscles, which could then be shown off in tight trousers. She, on the other hand, remained outside the spell of his figure, which had something to do with her annoyance with him in general, and a great deal to do with his ability to, reportedly, maintain defined abdominals whilst subsisting on a diet she knew to be composed primarily of cafeteria chips and the tins of Muggle Quality Street chocolates he kept hidden in his bottom right desk drawer.

Being held, bridal style, against his undeniably fit choc-built body was an outrage.

"Put me down, you ass," she hissed.

"Is that all the thanks I get for saving you?" he whispered back. "In any case, you'll need to let go of me yourself if you want me to put you down."

She released her hands from where they'd settled around his neck, and waited for him to comply.

"I'll scream. I swear on Merlin's book, if you don't put me down right now…"

He dropped her knees, but kept the other arm looped around her upper back, which was helpful as her ankle immediately folded beneath her.

"Gods! Damn!" she yelped.

"Are you alright?" he said, genuine concern in his voice.

"I've twisted my ankle on that damned stile, that's all," she said. "Help me over to sit."

She wrapped an arm over his shoulders, while he supported her under her arms, and helped her to sit down on the lower step of the stile.

As soon as Hermione had cried out, the four Longbottom sisters had rushed to assist, and now Cressida crouched at Hermione's feet with her wand out, running a basic diagnostic spell over her ankle.

"It's a mild sprain," Cressida reported, "Easily and directly mended."

She muttered a series of incantations, and Hermione felt warmth spread through her throbbing ankle, and when she rolled and twisted it, it felt right as rain.

"You're quite talented," said Hermione. "I cast numerous healing charms on the battlefield..."

Draco shot her a searing look.

"...on the _Quidditch _field," she hedged with an unconvincing laugh, "while we are at school, and I'll freely admit it was always a bit inelegant."

"Cressy is the best out of anyone with healing spells," enthused Cassandra. "I keep telling her to apply for the Healer program at St. Mungo's, then she could join the Aurors as a field medic and stop up all sorts of interesting bleeding, but of course they don't allow girls…"

"Cassandra," said Isadora softly, and it was all it took for the youngest Longbottom sister to snap her lips shut.

"They don't allow girls?" said Hermione, looking between Cressida and Cassandra and narrowing her eyes.

"Hermione," said Draco warningly, putting his hand at her elbow and encouraging her to stand.

"Yes, but…" she continued.

"There's no 'but' here. Not _now_," he said, meaningfully.

Isadora looked apologetic.

"Not at the Ministry," she said. "But Cressida could do a course at St. Mungo's in advanced household Healing if she liked, although I daresay she's already mastered every spell they could teach her."

"So, you're a natural, then," said Draco, offering Cressida his arm and his warmest, witch-wooing smile. "Thank you," he continued, "for setting my sister to rights." He looked back to where Hermione was shaking out her skirts and straightening her bodice. "She's of an independent mind, and if she decides she's going to break something, there's no stopping her."

_You're damned right there isn't_, thought Hermione. _Prat_.

There were two more stiles between them and the top of the hill leading down to the Averys' estate, and Hermione allowed Draco to help her over both of them.

Cassandra left off her interest in Draco as naturally as it had begun, and had taken to running sprints between the troupe as it walked and distant markers she chose at random, and Hermione couldn't help but admire such natural, joyful athleticism.

Isadora maintained her place at Hermione's side, while Penelope swung her reticule indifferently and looked bored.

Cressida walked arm in arm with Draco, and as he bent his head and spoke to her softly, laughing openly and often, her eyes kept finding his with something decidedly different than the diffuse and fleeting interest Hermione saw in the other Longbottom girls.

Hermione was well aware of Draco's intelligence, and of the appeal of it to a similarly intelligent woman, and felt a rising sense of alarm.

How much, exactly, could they accidentally interfere with this bit of history, and in what ways, and for how long?

When they arrived at the crest of the hill above the stately grey Avery manor house, Cassandra ran to Cressida and looped her arm through hers, forcing her to break from Draco and follow her down the hill.

"We'll wait here," said Isadora, who moved to sit on a large rock, and gestured for Hermione to do likewise. "The girls will bring William up, and we can introduce you."

Hermione gnawed irritatedly on the idea of unnatural limits being placed around Cressida's strong natural talents, and wondered what other ambitions these vivacious, intelligent Longbottom daughters harbored that were being stymied in a world of petticoats and slick-bottomed boots.

"Do you have professional plans, Miss Longbottom?" asked Hermione, looking at Isadora as she gazed placidly at the pastoral scene surrounding them.

"Professional," laughed Isadora. "What on Earth do you mean by that?"

Hermione could see Draco from the corner of her eye, lounging on a boulder and playing with a long blade of grass, but she refused to notice the look of admonishment he was clearly sending her.

"What you would like to do for a job," clarified Hermione. "You've finished at Hogwarts, presumably you've sat for your N.E.W.T.s. So, what comes next?"

Isadora wrinkled her brow.

"Marriage, naturally," she laughed. "And then everything that follows."

Hermione felt the heat of anger rising in her chest.

"Marriage, and children," she said, "with a Hogwarts education."

"How else would you know how to teach your children before they leave for school?" asked Isadora earnestly.

Hermione opened her mouth, and snapped it shut again.

"Hermione," said Draco, and Hermione turned to look at him.

He wasn't patronizing, or annoyed, or combative. His face was completely serious and, if she wasn't mistaken, regretful.

_This isn't your fight_, said his look, plainly and simply. It made Hermione angrier still, because he was right.

"Come and look at the hills," he said out loud, and Hermione stood up to follow him to the peak of the rise above the manor house.

He put out his arm, and she took it without a fight.

"It's beautiful country, isn't it?" he asked.

It was.

The Averys' estate was a large and dignified but otherwise unremarkable grey box, tucked into the base of a low, brown and emerald hill, whose sole beauty was its grounds. It was surrounded by glades of oak and ash trees, and fronted onto a placid little lake and a series of lush green lawns that Hermione imagined the young William Avery must have flown over on his first broomstick.

The air here, and in this time, was impossibly clean, wind-polished and sun-bleached, scented with mown grass, freshly turned soil, and a distant hint of horse.

"You grew up here," said Hermione. "You must be very fond."

"I did," answered Draco, "and I am. Although," he said, looking down and fussing at his blade of grass, "it's a process. Making the Manor a home I can be proud of."

Hermione looked at Draco in surprise.

She knew, of course, that the legal justice process in the postwar period was still ongoing, and likely would be for years to come. From time to time a court hearing would draw him away from work for the day, and when he returned he would be taciturn and difficult. She would fix him a cup of coffee, and gradually, he would return to his usual cocksure self, but what she saw in him in those hours afterward was, clearly, shame.

"Well," she ventured, with a smile, "it's a good job you're rebranding it as the Wizarding version of the Playboy Mansion. It's an entirely different image."

"As what?" he asked.

She shook her head. "It's a Muggle thing," she said. "American. Beautiful swimming pool, sticky carpet, lots of jiggling blondes. I do think you'd look rather smart in a smoking jacket."

"I have no idea what sort of fever dream you're on about, Granger, but your interest in jiggling blondes is becoming a concern. Just this morning I caught you with a redhead, and I know all about your predilections there."

His smirk was, admittedly, a bit charming. Hermione's belly churned.

"I know that you know how charming you can be," she said, and watched as his fingers stalled mid-fold on the blade of grass. "So please, be careful, Malfoy. About Cressida." She paused, and looked back over her shoulder at the other two Longbottom sisters. "I'm afraid she may already be well on the way to actually liking you. And there is something between her and William Avery I think we'd best be very careful to leave alone."

He looked at her for a long moment, face unreadable, then finally smiled at her.

"It wouldn't have been an issue if you'd agreed to be my wife."

Hermione stared at him.

"You still would have been a Granger, I'm sorry to tell you. And I'm not about to agree to be anyone's wife, let alone your undoubtedly long-suffering one," she grumbled.

"Weasley's," he said, flatly. "You're going to be Weasley's wife."

"No, I'm not."

He dropped his blade of grass, and turned his body toward her.

"But you're engaged," he said, raising his voice slightly. "You and the Weasel."

Hermione shook her head, but before she could say anything, they heard the voice of Cassandra Longbottom rising over the top of the hill.

"Hullo! Grangers! I've brought you William Avery!"

William Avery was handsome in a medium sort of way, of medium height, with a medium build, and medium brown hair, and his eyes were medium brown, too, but they were also quick and searingly intelligent, and carefully followed the way Cressida Longbottom was looking at the erstwhile Draco Malfoy.

"Hullo," said William, guardedly, offering the Grangers a short, curt bow once Cassandra had introduced them.

"Will you join us for dinner, Willy?" asked Cassandra, grasping at William's arm. "You must, we're to have the newlyweds, and the lovely Grangers, and I've sworn to have Mr. Martin and ask him about his wild adventures at Oxford." She wiggled her fingers and flashed her eyes.

"His what?" said Hermione.

"Cassandra," said Isadora, "if we're graced with Mr. Martin's company this evening, you'll speak politely to him about appropriate topics." She turned to Hermione. "Your cousin is, I'm sure you are aware, beloved in the neighborhood, but some of the younger people are very fond of his fanciful storytelling about his years in potions research."

"Oh, of course," said Hermione. "I'm also extremely interested in his years in potions research."

"What's it to be?" said Cassandra, "You'll come, won't you, Willy? We've all missed you dreadfully, but especially Cressy."

Cressida shot her younger sister a look that promised sororal retribution, and William shifted nervously between his feet.

"I'd be delighted, as always," he answered. "How do you find Wiltshire, Miss Granger?" he asked Hermione.

"It's beautiful," she said, truthfully. "Your estate is in a lovely setting."

William offered her a slight nod, and turned to Cassandra.

"Allow me to join your party, at least to the woods," he said. "I'm sure you all could use additional assistance over the stiles." He glanced at Cressida, and then at Draco.

"Thank you, William," said Isadora politely.

Hermione felt her gut twist as Cressida quickly moved to Draco's side, and then she herself grudgingly accepted the offered arm of a decidedly put out William Avery.

As they approached the first stile on the path back to Twiggybroke Cottage, William took a long look at Hermione, and finally smiled.

"Please allow me, Miss Granger," he said, rather more loudly than he needed to while glancing to where Draco was handing a rosy-cheeked Cressida over the stile, "to compliment you on your charming bonnet. The blue plays against your complexion uncommonly well."

As Hermione fumed at the ground, Draco's laugh echoed down the path, startling a hedgehog from its covert place in the thorny brush beside the stile.


	4. Chapter 4: The Dinner

"Perspicacity Martin."

The words were out of Hermione's mouth before the doorknob had finished rebounding off the wall. She struck through the threshold of Draco's bedroom, holding up a thin blue volume and giving it a short, triumphant shake.

Draco looked at her sideways, continuing to wind narrow lengths of white fabric around his neck and cross them over one another. "Please, enter my private bedchamber. There's never any need to knock."

"Thank you," said Hermione. She pushed the door to, then crossed the room to sit down on his bed.

"Mr. Martin, Malfoy," she began. "Cassandra Longbottom said that he was at Oxford, in Potions, and I suddenly recalled having once read about a Don who had conducted truly cutting edge, highly controversial experimental potions work."

She tucked her knees up under her skirt, and ignored Draco's doubtful look.

"It was absolutely ages and ages ago, and I couldn't recall the name, but I sneaked downstairs while Grix was taking Mr. Martin out for his late afternoon air, and had a look at the shelves. Lo and behold, there's a small section over the mantle of books by one Perspicacity Martin, of the Mettleworth Magical College at Oxford."

She dropped the book on Draco's coverlet, and gave it two sharp taps with the tip of her index finger.

"Did you know," she said, conspiratorially, "that with the exception of a small handful of very minor papers, all of his work has been lost? And it's here- right here- where we can snuggle up under the covers and read it all."

Draco's fingers paused mid-fold.

"You want me to snuggle up under the covers with you, Granger?"

"Not together, ass. But there are about eight of them, and if we traded off, we could both have read them all within a few days."

"Granger, if you were sitting in a tree that was on fire, and someone handed you a book, I'm afraid you'd perish."

Hermione's eyebrows knitted in thought. "It's possible. Why am I in the tree, and why is it on fire?"

"Gods, your mind. It amazes me. Please, do _try_ to recall that we're 200 years behind schedule," he said, resuming his complicated process with the cravat. "I'm going to have to admit that while I enjoy a good book as much, if not appreciably more than the next man, I'm feeling a bit of a time crunch here. What are you wearing to dinner, by the way?"

Hermione glanced down at herself. She was presently wearing only her chemise and corset. "Margaret's bringing by a gown in a moment." She picked up the book, then turned to stretch out on her stomach across the width of the bed, and began leafing through the pages.

After a stretch of a quiet minute, she gasped. "Merlin, Malfoy, our list of tasks be damned, you need to read this. His diagrams alone…"

"Keep any and all diagrams absolutely to yourself. Coming back round to the subject of urgent tasks, do you happen to have the Time Turner on you?"

Hermione pressed her hand over her cleavage, and looked back over her shoulder at him with suspicion.

"It's where it always is."

Draco tilted his head at her and spoke slowly. "Can I look at it?"

"Turn around," she ordered.

Draco didn't move. "Granger, I respect that we have long upheld a ban on discussing the details of our personal lives with one another, but I feel safe in violating it far enough to reassure you that I have seen breasts before. Entirely uncovered ones, even. I'm not going to bat an eye at you fetching a bit of broken metal from between yours in that get up." He gestured up and down her frame.

"Yes, but you haven't seen _my_ breasts, and they're the relevant pair to this discussion." Hermione sat up all the way to her knees on the bed, facing away from him, and tossed the book aside. "Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a tenuous bit of rigging. If anything flies free of its constraints, I expect you to look away immediately."

Draco's eye twitched slightly.

Carefully, keeping her attention on Draco, she pushed her hand through her cleavage, and began to conduct what appeared to be an archaeological dig.

"Merlin, Granger, how deep does it go?"

"Things shift, Malfoy."

"Do they? Tell me more. Be as descriptive as you like."

"Don't be a pervert."

"It's not being a pervert if there's an undressed woman on your bed, rooting around in her own underclothes. It's a natural law, you're welcome to look it up."

Hermione began to tug on something she found tucked beneath her left breast. "Hold on, I've got it."

Draco finished his cravat, and sat down on the edge of the bed as Hermione pulled the leather bag with the Time Turner from the front of her chemise.

"Here," she said, holding the bag out to Draco.

He dumped the contents of the bag out onto the coverlet.

All the parts of the Time Turner were present and accounted for: the central hourglass, set in its perforated disc, bolted into the inner ring. The outer ring, however, had separated from the rest, and broken into two pieces.

Draco picked up a broken arc in each hand, and pushed the two halves together.

"It can't be welded, not if it's going to hold up to travel of the kind we'll need to do to get home. We'll have to recast the outer circle," said Hermione, sitting down on her heels.

Draco nodded. "Obviously."

"It's not terribly complicated, but I don't know where we'll get the tools."

"There's a well-equipped lab at the Manor," he said, putting down the broken halves of the ring next to the rest of the Time Turner. "Depending on what's feasible, I can either do the work there, or try to bring the equipment here."

"I'd prefer you bring it here," said Hermione warily. "It's really a two-person job, we learned that the hard way, didn't we? And I can't go to the Manor with you. What if something went wrong while you were working with it? I wouldn't have any idea."

"Worried about me, Granger?" he asked.

Hermione shook her head. "I'm worried about never seeing my friends and family again, getting stuck without resources in a century where I can't do my life's work, and tearing the apparently sturdy but not invincible fabric of time with my presence." She sighed in annoyance, and lay back out across the bed, on her side and facing Draco.

He picked up the small blue book with an air of indifference, and opened the front cover.

"I meant what I said before." Hermione stretched out her right arm, put her head down on her shoulder, and looked up at Draco. His profile was silhouetted against the amber late afternoon light filtering through the net curtain at the window.

"You've said rather a lot of things over our long years together, Granger," he replied, without lifting his eyes from the book. "You'll need to be more specific."

Hermione frowned. "You really do need to leave off flirting with Cressida. You may even need to actively discourage her. She's rather taken with you."

"Mm."

"'Mm'? Is that your typical response when a beautiful young woman finds herself pointlessly pining after you, Malfoy?"

"I'm afraid so."

"The way William Avery was looking at you, you're going to find yourself involved in a duel before long."

"I'll take him. Easily." He flipped a page, and then another. "Gods, Granger, you weren't joking. The diagrams on recombination sequences at the third stage are extraordinary. Have you ever seen anything quite like this?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I certainly haven't. Look at this." He lay the book open between them, and leaned down beside her on the bed, resting on his left elbow.

"They're stunning, aren't they?" enthused Hermione. "As I said, there are at least eight of his books downstairs." She waved away his look of reproach. "Yes, I realize that fixing the Time Turner and locating that blasted snuff box of yours takes precedence, but I know you, and you can't possibly fail to see that this is an unparalleled opportunity. We've stumbled across an astonishing missing piece of the body of magical knowledge. I absolutely cannot wait to speak to Mr. Martin about it at dinner this evening."

"Grix decided to let him go, then?" said Draco absently. Then without warning, he clapped his hand over his mouth. "Merlin, what's he gone and done? It looks like he completely disregarded the relationship between temperature scale and stir patterns. That's an elemental rule- it's part of the absolute earliest intuitive magic that we know of. Bloody hell."

"I know!" cried Hermione. She balled her fists and pulled her knees up to her belly in excitement. "And so far as I can tell from the text, he actually _did_ those things, and took notes about it. I honestly have no idea how he's still alive."

"I have no idea how anyone's still alive. On paper this looks like it should incinerate half of London."

"See? It's beyond fascinating," she said, jamming her index finger hard into his chest. "I told you it was." She rolled over onto her back, and smiled up at him in satisfaction.

From his place beside her on the bed, Draco looked up from the book.

She curled her lip. "What?"

He said nothing.

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Stop looking at me like that."

Draco gently closed the book, but his gaze didn't shift in the slightest.

Hermione sighed.

"I'm not taking it back," she insisted. "I _did_ tell you so. And I said, stop looking at me like that."

"Like what?"

"Like I've just eaten the last biscuit in the tin and there will never be another one. Whenever I'm right about something, and I get excited about it, you look at me just like that. As though I've devastated you for life. You're such a child."

He finally looked away from her.

"Oh, don't pout. You're like a wounded Byronic hero when you do it, and then I don't know what to do with you." She turned over onto her side again, reached up, and flicked his forelock with a finger. "How do you even do that with your hair?" she asked. "That bit in the front is always so perfectly imperfect."

He turned back toward her.

"I'm not telling you. It's my secret weapon. If I reveal how it's done, its power will be lost. Then how would I get the witches I fancy to notice me?" he asked.

"They all notice you, and you know it. So you do actually fancy some of them?"

His mouth twitched sarcastically at the corner, but his eyes didn't smile. "I do."

"Well. How helpful for you to have your hair to deploy. I still can't get mine to do as it's told." She grabbed a coil at her temple, and looked at it intently as she pulled it straight, then let it rebound.

She realized that Draco was still watching her.

"Your hair is fine," he said. His eyes stopped at hers. "It's good."

Her pulse picked up. He wasn't being himself, and it made her incredibly nervous.

"But?" she prompted. "I'm waiting for your punchline, Malfoy. Please deliver it."

He said nothing at all.

"Alright, your opportunity has passed you by." She gestured between them. "Give me the Time Turner, I need to go finish getting dressed."

Draco reached down and fumbled for the pieces of the Time Turner and the leather bag. Once he had them both, he tucked the Time Turner inside the bag, and handed it to Hermione.

"Thanks, Malfoy."

"You're welcome."

Hermione waited for a sneer or a jibe, but none came.

"Are you feeling quite alright?" she asked.

He looked at her evenly. "I'm fine."

"Are you, though? You're not feverish?" She lifted her hand up to his forehead.

She intended it as a jibe, but he didn't smirk at her, nor bat her hand away, and she found herself pausing, feeling his skin under her palm.

She'd touched him before, of course.

Grudgingly. Accidentally.

Working together over five long years in a packed laboratory, it was inevitable: one hand brushing over another inside the broken part of a machine. Grasping an elbow before it accidentally struck home at an eye. Fingertips at the small of her back when Draco moved around her holding a cursed object.

Sharing space and being in motion between benches and tables oftentimes looked like a bit of amateur ballet.

Hermione would have admitted- under duress- that they'd developed a striking, if quarrelsome, professional intimacy.

Beyond the physical space that they shared, there was the intellectual thirst they had in common, and not infrequently it caused their days to bleed into long nights, working at the cusp of a breakthrough.

Neither Hermione nor Draco were very good at saying "Quit," so she'd learned spells to conjure a cot, blanket, and pillow in their first month together at the Ministry.

She was, for instance, well aware that he snored if he rolled over onto his back in his sleep.

None of which had helped things with…

Hermione brought her awareness back to the now.

His forehead under her hand was warm.

Not too warm.

Just...warm.

"You said that you weren't going to marry the Weasel." His mouth twitched downward. "Ron. You said it, before. But I'd heard you'd been engaged." Draco looked into Hermione's face and spoke neutrally, like he was letting her know that she'd left her umbrella behind at the office the day before.

Hermione's mouth dropped open slightly, but she shut it again, and sighed.

"We made an agreement, Malfoy," she said, taking her hand away from his forehead.

"I know, but…"

She cut him off. "No. You used up your lifetime allowance of criticism aimed at Ron in our first year working together. I already know exactly what you think about him, and our relationship."

"Are you sure? There might be a few bits I left out."

"Yes, I'm sure, and you can keep your bits to yourself. If you don't mind, we'll continue as we have. You don't say a single word about Ron, and I don't ask you about the witches that come by wondering if you'd like to take a walk to the tea cart. Which, frankly, I've started to think is a code. That way we avoid taking turns throttling one another over the workbenches, and temporospatial research peacefully advances."

Draco sucked in a breath and opened his mouth, but before he could speak, there was a knock at the door across the landing.

Someone spoke. "It's Margaret McClure, Miss Granger. I've come with the gown."

Hermione sat up.

"I'm across the hall," she said loudly. She looked down at Draco. "With my brother." His expression said nothing at all. "I'll be there in a moment."

She jumped up from the bed, and turned to grab the Time Turner. Carefully, she pushed it down between her breasts, where it darted back into the murky depths of its habitat.

"Would you like to keep the book?" she asked.

Draco looked down at the book in his hands like he'd forgotten he was holding it.

"I suppose, yes. Thank you."

Hermione narrowed her eyes at him.

"How is it that you know how to tie a cravat, anyway?"

She watched in amazement as a hint of pink stole over the apples of his cheeks.

"I…"

It was so rare that she caught him at a loss for words, that she wanted to sit back down on the bed, grab a snack, and watch him struggle.

"It's a family thing," he finally said.

She shook her head.

"Cravats?"

He nodded.

"I believe that is the strangest revelation I've been privy to about a family who has been into some really unsettling things."

As she walked out of his room and across the landing into her own bedroom, she caught him out of the corner of her eye.

He fell onto his back on the bed, threw his arm over his eyes, and sighed.

Mr. Martin's chair didn't want to make it up a short rise on its own, so Draco was obliged to push it from behind.

"We're going to be late," muttered Hermione, lagging behind them with her skirts pulled up in her fist. "I'm not sure how these things work. Hopefully they're not all sat down at the table and getting started without us."

Draco leaned forward and gave the chair an enormous push. "Is there something caught under this thing? Can you look for me?"

Hermione bent down and looked. "There is, actually. It's a bloody great rock."

She tucked her fingers down the front of her dress, and pulled out her wand.

Draco, starting to make some headway on a decent sweat under the strain of trying to shift Mr. Martin's chair, looked at her in disbelief.

"Alright, now you're just jamming things down there because you like doing it."

"There are no pockets, Malfoy! Margaret has pockets in her gowns, I've seen her use them, but I have no clue whatsoever where the Longbotttom girls keep their wands. Magically expanded reticules? I haven't the slightest idea."

She took aim at the obstruction under the chair, and sent a short, hard blast at it that sent it rolling off into the undergrowth below a copse of birch trees.

Suddenly freed, the chair jerked forward, and Draco stumbled after it.

"What right have people to go around leaving boulders in pathways like that?" he grumbled. "Don't they know people with chairs come through here?"

Hermione stashed her wand and hopped after them again, now moving significantly faster. "I suppose they're not thinking about it."

"When we get back, I'm breaking apart every rock in England."

"That's a proportional response. What's gotten up your nose, Malfoy? You were perfectly agreeable until I came downstairs."

"I'm perfectly agreeable now," he said. "Martin, eyes on your twelve, you're steering into another stone."

They rolled up to the front door of Bugg-Buntley Hall a mere twenty minutes late, and before Hermione could knock, the door was opened by a House-elf wearing a beautifully embroidered length of bedsheet.

"This way, please." The elf bent to them in a little bow, and swept his arm open to invite them in.

The door opened into an entryway with a tall, arched ceiling, fitted with wooden beams; its walls were paneled from bottom to top in warm, mid-toned oak. Opposite the door was a wide wooden staircase, turning twice at right angles to the floor above. In addition to the lingering light of the summer streaming through a pair of enormous mullioned windows overseeing the stairs, the space was further lit by the flickering warmth of dozens of candles. The effect of the wood, and the light, each in its own right mellow and golden-hued, was of a generous, stately warmth, drawing them in toward peace and quiet repose.

The moment was immediately broken by the unmistakable bombastic shout of Lord Thomas, echoing off the wood paneling of the hallway to the right.

Draco held out his arm, and Hermione took it, following behind Mr. Martin, who was following behind the elf, traveling over a meandering archipelago of rich red Oriental rugs that floated on the surface of an endless sea of parquet.

As they progressed down the hall, Hermione identified additional voices, most of them female, and was prepared to greet the Longbottom family when the elf delivered them to a large drawing room.

This, too, was paneled in lustrous oak, although the ceiling had closed down to a more human scale, with yellow candlelight echoing off the walls and casting the family party in a drowsy glow as the visitors were shown into the room.

The Longbottom family, which included the newlywed Thomas Longbottom and his wife, Mrs. Longbottom, as well as a dour-looking William Avery, sat ranged around the room on deep sofas upholstered in olive green, and crimson armchairs oriented towards a monstrously large fireplace.

"Grangers! Martin!" boomed Sir Thomas, opening his arms in greeting. "We were about to starve to death. We've nearly abandoned our manners entirely and begun without you."

Hermione curtsied while Draco offered a slight nod of his head.

"We beg your pardon, Sir Thomas," she said. "Mr. Martin's chair was caught up for a while."

"Ah! Caught everyone up, Martin?" yelled Sir Thomas.

Martin peeped at him through his spectacles. "Stone's throw," he rasped. He turned to Draco, stuck a wrinkled hand from his packet of blankets, and patted Draco's trouser leg. "A sturdy lad. Quidditch! Girls."

"And I'm sure you weren't detained because Miss Granger put an extra effort into her gown and coiffure!" bellowed Sir Thomas, sending Hermione a cheeky smile and an exaggerated wink. "I have these four girls of my own- I'm no fool. You look an absolute picture, Miss Granger. A picture! You'd better have told her so, young man!"

Sir Thomas looked between Draco and Hermione expectantly, with his mouth hanging slightly, smilingly open, like a Labrador Retriever waiting for its ball to be thrown.

She had, truth be told, been fussed over by Margaret for much longer than she'd expected to be.

The gown was striking. It was white, like her day dress, but edged in the cautionary red of an Oriental poppy, and embroidered with a riot of midsummer flowers in blues, yellows, reds, and pinks around the bust, sleeves, and border of the skirt. Her hair was pulled up, but loosely so, with tendrils trailing down her neck. Margaret had stuck a large white daisy at the gathered mass of hair at the back of her head, then rouged her cheeks and lips.

She thought that if, on the walk to the Longbottoms', she were to encounter a Scandinavian fertility ritual that involved skipping with sensual abandon around a suggestive pole, she'd have been well prepared.

Draco nodded politely, and turned to Hermione. He had that pained, biscuit look again. "You look very beautiful."

Hermione tilted her head and smiled at him angelically, brushing a curl of hair back from her eye. "Overkill," she muttered through her teeth, moving her mouth as little as possible, and then she knocked his right foot irritatedly with her left.

Draco scowled.

"An affectionate brother," affirmed Sir Thomas. "I approve of you, Granger! I approve. Now, let's eat!"

The dining room surprised no one at all with its wood paneled walls.

Hermione had little experience with 21st century formal dining, which wasn't Ron's cup of tea, and none with obsolete customs of the table, and would likely have catastrophically bungled the protocol had Grix not pulled her aside on her way out the door of the cottage.

"You'll sit next to Sir Thomas, at the end of the table with the rest of the women. I expect you'll be asked to lead them in, and sit at Sir Thomas' right. Just remain calm, and once you're seated, watch everyone else before you do anything. Don't worry about who you can talk to- the only person in that household who might have cared is Lady Longbottom, and her husband and children have forced her to lower her standards. Don't shout down the table, and you'll be fine."

Hermione stared at him.

"I'm not worried about him," Grix said, jerking his head in Draco's direction. "He's the type to come out alright even if he puts his feet on the table and starts whistling _Rule Britannia!_ Just tell him to watch Martin with the wine. He'll make himself sick, and then you'll hear no end of it from me. Understood?"

Hermione wanted nothing more than to ask him how he always knew to tell her what to do, but she merely nodded. "Are you sure you won't come?"

Grix shook his head.

"I'll eat my own food, at my own table, thank you."

Hermione felt a rush of affection for him. "Alright."

He had, unsurprisingly, been correct.

In the drawing room, Sir Thomas held out his arm to Hermione. She took it, and walked with him ahead of the rest of the party down to the dining room, and successfully navigated to the seat at Sir Thomas' right hand.

The table was set opulently, with a white cloth, shining candelabras, urns overflowing with June flowers, gilt plates, and spotless gold-rimmed wine goblets. The Longbottoms had spared no effort for their guests, and Hermione flushed with embarrassment as an elf pulled out her chair.

Isadora, in a soft pink silk gown and without her spectacles, sat down with her characteristic graceful ease between Hermione and an apathetic Penelope, and Hermione followed her lead as she removed the cloth napkin from her plate and laid it across her lap.

"Difficulty with the walk, then, Granger?"

Hermione looked up to see who had spoken to her, only to comprehend that the speaker was William Avery, and his question had been directed at Draco.

Hermione leaned forward and looked up the table to her right.

Draco was at Lady Longbottom's left hand, and in the seat immediately beside him sat William Avery, both men laying their napkins across their laps.

Draco's movements were as they always seemed to be, languid and unconcerned, and Hermione realized with rising irritation that he managed to make the process of slowly unfolding a napkin look elegant and attractive, thrown into sharp relief as it was by William snapping his napkin loose and laying it with rough displeasure over his thighs.

"Nothing that presented too much trouble," said Draco. "Although there were some unnecessary obstacles to Mr. Martin's chair on the pathway between the cottage and here. In the morning, I'm going to walk it and make sure it's clear. He ought to be able to wander however far he likes without getting hitched up."

"I agree, wholeheartedly." Cressida leaned forward from her place across from Hermione. Her deep brown eyes looked up the table with animated interest. "Mr. Martin ought to have no trouble whatsoever getting wherever he'd like to go. I've been saying so for ages. Haven't I, Penny?"

Penelope made a gesture somewhere between a shrug and a nod. "I suppose you've mentioned it once."

Hermione leaned back, and didn't see Draco's response, but Cressida's smile and the pink blooming across her skin told Hermione that it was cordial enough.

The food was brought out on serving plates, and in bowls and tureens, and set in an impressively symmetrical pattern over the surface of the table.

There was a completely beautiful chestnut soup, and mackerel with fennel and mint, and Hermione watched for cues from the diners around her as to how to manage her silverware and not make an ass of herself.

She watched Martin carefully, too.

He sat to Lady Longbottom's immediate right, turning his head to and fro and listening to the quiet conversations humming along around him, and occasionally picking up his glass of wine and taking a small sip.

"Would you like the fish, Mr. Martin?" asked the younger Thomas Longbottom, who sat to his right.

"Butter!" agreed Martin, rapping at the table lightly three times with his knuckles.

Tom opened Mr. Martin's napkin and spread it across his lap, then scooped food onto Martin's plate, and watched patiently while he took his first bites.

Cassandra leaned around her brother's right arm, and smiled puckishly. "I told Miss Granger that I'd ask you about your potions, Mr. Martin." She sat back while a tureen levitated in front of her to the table, then leaned forward again. "What was the worst accident that you ever had in your laboratory at Oxford? Did anyone ever lose an arm? Or at least a finger?"

"Cassandra." Lady Longbottom was the definition of cool and collected, and even when scolding her morbidly curious youngest child, her voice was soft and detached, and her face remained perfectly serene. Hermione tried to picture her shouting, and couldn't. She was in her early 40s, rangy and graceful, with a startlingly beautiful face. She had pale blue eyes with thick lashes, and masses of gleaming golden curls held up at the back of her head in an aristocratic sweep. She was clearly the chief author of her four daughters' undeniable beauty.

Martin took up his wine goblet, sipped at it, and looked sideways at Cassandra, then raised his eyebrows twice in succession.

"No arms," he said. "A finger!" He flicked his index finger open from its grip on his wine goblet and jutted it out twice, sharply. "Found again, in good time." He lifted his glass back to his lips and drained it in two gulps.

Hermione leaned forward and looked up the table until she caught Draco's eye.

He looked unimpressed as she jerked her head subtly toward Mr. Martin.

She glared at him meaningfully.

"The wine," she mouthed.

He shrugged.

Hermione rolled her eyes.

She dropped her hand to the table, and made an M with her first three fingers, then stuck out her pinky and thumb and made a drinking gesture.

_Martin. The wine._

"It's fine," mouthed Draco.

"No, it isn't," she said silently.

He turned away from her. "Lady Longbottom, are the table arrangements yours, or is this another one of your daughters' talents? They're extraordinary."

The hostess smiled at the compliment, and owned that she'd arranged them herself.

Hermione turned back to Sir Thomas, who she belatedly realized had been speaking to her.

"Please excuse me, Sir Thomas, I missed what you just said."

"Cats, Miss Granger!"

Hermione was at a loss.

"Cats."

"Yes, indeed. Do you have any?"

"Oh. I...yes, I have one. He's getting on in years, but he's a half Kneazle. His name is Crookshanks."

"Crookshanks!" burst Sir Thomas. "After dinner, I'll introduce you."

"Introduce me?" asked Hermione.

Penelope rolled her head back and lifted her eyes to the ceiling. "Father, you mustn't," she drawled. "Leave it alone."

"Ha!" he answered. "I'll do as I like, my love, and you do as you like, and then we'll both be happy."

Penelope sighed passive aggressively, and went back to poking at her mackerel with a fish fork.

Isadora leaned close to Hermione. "I feel as though I must warn you, Miss Granger, that my father is singularly enthusiastic about his hobby."

"I'm sure it's quite interesting," said Hermione.

There was a series of three coughs from the other end of the table, and Hermione leaned forward slightly to look at Draco.

Without looking back at her, he touched his nose, and then swiftly and subtly made the shape of a rectangle with his thumbs and index fingers.

_Snuff. Box._

He jerked his head toward Mrs. Thomas Longbottom, the new bride, sitting directly across the table from Hermione.

Hermione flicked her hand in dismissal.

_Alright, I'm getting to it._

She tried to catch Mrs. Longbottom's eye, but she was staring deliberately into her soup with the demeanor of a student praying to all available deities that the teacher will call on anyone else in the class.

"Congratulations on your nuptials, Mrs. Longbottom," Hermione finally said. "The reception was lovely. The cake was excellent."

"Cake!" erupted Mr. Martin from the opposite end of the table.

Mrs. Longbottom looked up at her and nodded complacently. "Mm," she elaborated, with admirable brevity, then dove straight back into her meditations on the soup.

Hermione sighed. She cleared her throat, and Draco looked at her from the side of his eye.

She touched her lips with her index finger, and projected it forward.

_Ask._

Then she stretched her hands out as though she was pulling taffy.

_Long._

She paused, considering. At last, she made a low, grabbing sort of gesture with both hands.

_Bottom._

Draco choked on his wine, and spent the next minute coughing with his napkin held over his mouth.

Once he'd recovered, he nodded without looking at Hermione, and leaned back in his chair.

"Lovely weather for the wedding," he said to Tom. "June can be a bit unpredictable."

"Indeed," agreed Tom. "It was...well, it was the most beautiful day." He spoke wistfully, and looked down the table at his wife, who returned his glances with a bright flush to her cheeks, then turned her attention to her fish with a secretive smile on her lips.

"You couldn't have asked for a more picturesque scene," added Hermione, "with the roses in bloom in the garden."

The young Mrs. Longbottom nodded, and continued to master the art of conversational restraint through her deepening blush.

"Lots of gifts," said Draco.

Hermione coughed.

_Subtle._

"Oh, well," said Young Tom. "Yes, we were certainly blessed in that regard."

"Have you opened them all?" asked Draco. "Even the little ones?"

Hermione jumped in.

"My brother is a snuff box enthusiast," she said. "He cares about almost nothing else."

She ignored Draco's snort.

"I noticed the most singular snuff box on the table at the wedding," she said. "A little badger, I think?"

Young Tom and Mrs. Longbottom both looked entirely unsure of what she was talking about.

"A swan, I believe it was, Hermione," said Draco. "Very elegant, you can't have missed it."

"We haven't opened all of our presents yet," said Tom, glancing furtively at his wife. "We've been…" he trailed off, and began to blush fiercely on his own account. "Well, we've been rather busy."

Mrs. Longbottom looked like she was going to spontaneously combust, and Hermione jammed her soup spoon into her own mouth and stared at the tablecloth to avoid laughing with sympathetic embarrassment.

"Perfectly understandable, but one doesn't miss a swan-shaped snuff box, does one?" pressed Draco.

"Did you get two snuff boxes, then?" William asked Tom. "There was also the one shaped like a curled up cat that you passed along to my mother when she called on you this morning."

Hermione became legitimately concerned for Mrs. Longbottom, who was now as red as an apple and had begun gulping at her wine.

"A cat?" asked Sir Thomas, perking up.

"Not a real cat, Father, a false one," said Penelope.

"Why the blazes would you have a false cat?" boomed Sir Thomas. "Pointless!"

"It isn't a false cat, Daddy," said Cassandra, "it's a snuff box. Tom didn't like it, so he gave it to William's mother."

"What was wrong with the snuff box?" Draco leaned further back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest, and frowned. "And who ever said it was a cat?"

"It wasn't your gift, was it, Mr. Granger?" asked Tom. He shifted forward in his chair and looked as though he might leap out of it at any moment and go running out into the garden. "If so, I'm terribly…"

"We didn't bring a gift," said Hermione. She ignored the look of reproach Draco sent down the table.

"We arrived not knowing we'd be attending a wedding," Draco explained.

"That's perfectly alright," said Tom. He knitted his brow. "As far as the box goes"- he lifted his hands in a gesture of helplessness- "I don't use snuff?"

"I'd like to use snuff," said Cassandra.

"Cassandra." Lady Longbottom dabbed at her mouth with her napkin.

"The snuff box is at your estate, then?" asked Draco, turning to William.

William nodded, and knocked back the rest of his wine. "It appears so."

"Wonderful." Draco reached across the table and grabbed the decanter of wine from Mr. Martin's hand, poured two fingers into Martin's glass, then moved the decanter to his own side of the table.

"It's in the shape of a cat, you say?" asked Sir Thomas, eyes alight.

"It looks like a dyspeptic hedgehog to me," said William. "Mother insists it's a cat."

"Dyspepsia. More fiber," added Mr. Martin helpfully. "More wine!"

"No, no more wine," said Draco. "I'll not be thrown out of my bed by a vengeful elf while I'm trying to read."

Cressida gazed up the table at Draco with her large, shimmering, bovine eyes. "I love to read while I'm in bed," she breathed.

William crossed his arms over his chest and huffed out a breath so hard it created a little circle of spreading waves on the surface of his soup. "We all like to read in bed, Cressida," he said.

"I don't much care for it," added Penelope.

"You don't much care for anything, Penny," said Cassandra matter-of-factly.

"It's reading in the bath, for me," offered Sir Thomas.

"I always drop my books in the bath, and then I get a lecture about respecting the property of the lending library from Izzy," said Cassandra. "I've been reading a Muggle book about a vizier's daughter who tells wonderful stories. There's one about a fisherman who finds a chest with a corpse inside, and two men confess to the murder, only one of them is obviously lying..."

"Merlin, where on Earth did you find a book like _that_," interrupted Isadora, coloring.

"_Ça suffit_, Cassandra." Lady Longbottom was unruffled.

"We found the finger," Mr. Martin reminded the table.

Draco shifted the wine still closer to himself.

The House-elves came to clear the table completely, pull back the white tablecloth to reveal a green one underneath, and reset the table, this time with dishes of roasts, potatoes, buttered vegetables, and other hearty dishes, as well as elaborate jellies and pies.

They ate the second course in relative peace, though Hermione couldn't help but notice the stolen looks between Tom and his wife, who had never recovered from her blushes. She remained the color of a vicious sunburn, self-consciously half-smiling.

The table was cleared yet again at the end of the course, the green cloth removed to leave its wooden surface bare. It was relaid with the candelabras and flowers, then elves brought out dishes of fresh fruits and candied nuts, which the party picked at in a desultory fashion.

"You were at Hogwarts, then?" asked William, turning to his side and giving Draco a piercing look.

Draco brought his wine glass to his lips and sipped slowly.

Hermione watched his mind work.

"I was," Draco answered. "Before your time. We're rather older than you. My sister very much so."

Hermione glowered.

"You were in Ravenclaw, I understand?" Draco asked William.

William nodded. "Yes. I was Sorted in the same year as Cressida." His eyes darted to the other end of the table, then back. He nodded at the elf who delivered his cup of coffee, then picked up his dessert spoon and twirled it.

He turned in his chair and looked down the table toward Isadora.

"You were a year ahead of us, Izzy." He glanced across the table from himself. "And Tom, you were two years above. Do either of you recall Mr. and Miss Granger from your time at Hogwarts?"

Hermione flipped over one of the sugared walnuts on her dessert plate with the tip of her spoon, and tried not to look at Isadora, with her upright posture and her hands laid genteelly in her lap.

"I don't suppose that I do," Isadora said, "but that isn't much of a surprise. We were rather occupied with our studies in school, weren't we both, Tom?"

Tom nodded in agreement.

Isadora gave William a mannerly smile. "I know that I was very focused on learning."

William opened his mouth, then thought better of what he was about to say, and closed it.

Isadora turned her smile on Hermione.

"I apologize, Miss Granger." She laid a hand on Hermione's wrist. "We weren't all as conscious of our schoolmates as we ought to have been."

Hermione could have hugged her.

"Draco and I weren't particularly memorable in our years at school," said Hermione. "I'm afraid nothing remarkable happened to us while we were there."

Draco twisted the stem of his wine glass between his fingers, then brought it to his mouth, and drank.

The women retired to the drawing room so the men could continue to drink, and Hermione spent an anxious forty-five minutes wondering what William Avery was saying to Draco and vice versa before the gentlemen joined them.

Hermione found a book on the Longbottoms' shelves and sat on one of the green sofas reading it, while Penelope lounged at the end of another sofa ignoring the needlework in her lap, and looking entirely done with everything. Cressida sat at the piano playing a vaguely mournful folk tune, eyes glinting in the candlelight, while Cassandra, Isadora, Mrs. Longbottom and Lady Longbottom played a card game whose rules Hermione didn't understand in the least.

The men rolled into the room looking redder in the cheeks than they had at the end of dinner, and Hermione despaired to note that Mr. Martin looked decidedly pleased with himself, and needed Draco's help to stop bumping his chair into the walls as they proceeded into the room.

Wiliam crossed the room swiftly to stand next to Cressida and turn her pages for her, while Tom sat on a chair just behind his wife, and surreptitiously rubbed the silk of her gown between his fingers while he watched her play.

Draco deposited Mr. Martin near the end of Hermione's sofa, and used his wand to turn the chair off and drop it to the floor so Martin couldn't go careening around the room. Then he sat next to Hermione, and sighed contentedly.

"You seem happy with yourself," Hermione said quietly.

"I am," he agreed. "I've just eaten a singularly satisfying meal, I've been filled up with my and Mr. Martin's shares of wine, and have just been treated to a generous portion, or two, or three, of the brandy Sir Thomas holds back for guests."

"I'm silencing your bedroom tonight, you know." She flipped the page of a book she wasn't actually reading.

"An intriguing proposition," he said. "If you're worried about my snoring, I'll have you know that I'm not drunk. Although I did get into a lively discussion with William about the inclusion of powdered spruce resin as a stabilizing agent in high-volatility potions, and Mr. Martin used the lapse in supervision to down an unknown number of thimbles-full of brandy. I expect to be flogged mercilessly by that snappy elf of yours when we get back to the cottage."

"You had one job, you know," she said reproachfully.

"Two, actually, and I did one of them admirably. We know the snuff box has been rudely regifted to Avery's mother, and now we get to spend an enchanting morning paying a social call to William that he does not in any respect want us to make."

Sir Thomas had sat himself in an armchair close to the fire, called a House-elf to his side, and whispered to him.

Within a few moments, the elf returned, holding in each hand a completely put-out looking cat.

Penelope audibly groaned from her place on the couch.

The elf handed one of the cats to Sir Thomas, who placed it on his lap and began stroking its head.

It was mostly black, with large patches of white at its haunches and chest, and white feet and lower legs, as though it were wearing two clean pairs of cotton athletic socks. It had small, blunt-tipped ears, but its most striking traits were a pair of enormous green-yellow eyes, round as dinner plates and staring into the room blankly, and a symmetrical white patch underneath its nose in the precise shape of a flourishing and well-groomed moustache, curling up at the ends like a pair of sideways question marks. Its two upper canine teeth hung out over its bottom lip, which gave it a decidedly stunned and unintellectual air.

"This, Miss Granger," he began, in the softest voice Hermione had yet to hear him use, "is Hugo. Say hello to the Grangers, Hugo."

Sir Thomas lifted Hugo's right front paw, and used it to wave stupidly at Hermione and Draco.

Hugo responded by closing and opening his eyes lethargically.

Hermione slapped her hand down on Draco's thigh, and squeezed it, hard.

"He's waving the cat at us," she whispered.

Draco folded his hand over hers, and clenched her fingers in his.

"I can see that."

"I don't know what to do," she said.

"I think we just watch."

Sir Thomas handed Hugo back to the elf, and took the second cat- a massive grey tabby- into his lap.

It was extraordinarily handsome in the face, and bore the expression of a sociopath with the tools and time required to execute an undiscoverable destruction of evidence.

"And this is Edward. He's just had his bath, haven't you, Teddy?" Sir Thomas jiggled the cat slightly while it hung its paws over his arm and looked like it was ready to first commit homicide and then shuffle off its own mortal coil with icy efficiency. "He's my feisty chap, aren't you? Don't like your baths, my good fellow? That's too bad!"

At the piano, Cressida finished her tune, and began another, with a soft, longing sort of melody, and this time, she sang while she accompanied herself.

"_One evening as I rambled, among the leaves so green…'_"

William attentively turned her pages, and it wasn't until Hermione looked up from her book that she noticed Cressida's eyes had fallen on Draco, and she was looking to him in yearning glances as often as her mastery of the notes in front of her allowed.

"_'Your beauty so enticed me, I could not pass it by…'_"

Her eyes were large, and in the candlelight appeared still larger- half-lidded and wetly gleaming like a prize milk cow's.

She was gazing. Longingly.

"_'And if by chance you should look for me, perhaps you'll not me find…'_"

Draco seemed not to have noticed, but Hermione watched as William Avery's page turning went from smooth and unobtrusive to crisp and snappish, as he followed the line of sight between Cressida and Draco with obvious and rising annoyance.

"_Sun and dark she followed him, his teeth did brightly shine…_"

"What on Earth is she singing about?" muttered Hermione. She realized that Draco still had his hand over hers. "I'm not sure if you've realized, my affectionate brother," she said, pulling her hand out from under his, "but Miss Cressida Longbottom seems to be serenading you."

Draco looked away from Lord Thomas as he continued to tempt fate by assertively jostling Edward the cat, and folded his hands in his lap.

"What do you mean, she's over there with her boyfriend-" he cut himself off as his eyes connected with Cressida's. "Oh, Merlin."

For the first time in the entire span of her long memory, Hermione took no pleasure in saying "I told you so," to Draco Malfoy.

"Gods damn it all, Granger, what do I do?"

"Ideally she rediscovers that the fellow over there turning her pages is a very smart catch," she answered under her breath, "but until then, I think you're going to need to ignore her as much as possible. You could, I suppose, make up an engagement."

"To whom?" he asked.

"I don't know. Lavender Brown, she's single again, and it's a common enough surname." Draco shuddered. "Or make something up. She could be called Yolanda."

Draco looked at her deliberately. "Yolanda."

"Why not?"

"I have no objections to the name, exactly, but there would be questions about a betrothed that I'm not prepared to answer. Where does Yolanda live? What are her family connections? How much does she stand to inherit?"

"Are you sure you've never read a Jane Austen novel?" asked Hermione.

"I've never heard of her, is she one of those tawdry writers whose work you keep tucked in that atrocious green bag of yours and squirrel away in your lap on your lunch hour?"

"The tawdriest," agreed Hermione. "She writes the most depraved sort of sex books."

"We'll talk more about that later," Draco said, "but what do I do about Miss Lovelorn over there?"

"Now you want my advice?" She scowled at the pleading look of innocence he'd conjured. "Alright: go and flirt with her sister."

"Which one?"

"I don't think it matters. I suppose it ought to be Penelope, she seems unlikely to respond well to it."

Draco looked at her flatly. "You think that flirting with Cressida's sister is going to put her off me?"

"I don't see why not," Hermione nodded. "What? What's that look for?"

"I want to tell you that you don't understand women in the slightest, but I'd like to keep all of my toes intact for another few years."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Nevermind. I'm not flirting either intentionally or unintentionally with another Longbottom sister. It needs to be something else."

"Have you tried not flirting at all?"

He scrunched up his nose.

"My mother didn't raise me to be rude to women, Granger. That was all Lucius."

"You're rude to me," she noted.

"Right, but you're you."

"Alright. Pretend she's me, then."

Draco's mouth twitched.

"What?" she asked. "Too much?"

"Yes." He looked at her for a beat. "Too much."

"Alright. Then don't speak at all."

Cressida finished her song with a drawn out gesture at the piano and a lingering look at Draco, and William snapped the last page of music over.

Mr. Martin began to tap his foot against the footrest of his chair, and raised his voice in a surprisingly robust tenor.

"_There is a young maiden, she lives all a-lone…_"

"Oh, dear," said Hermione."

"_She lives all a-lone on the shore-o!_"

"I believe that's our cue." Draco stood up, and tapped Martin's chair into life.

"That was a beautiful meal. We're most gratified, Sir Thomas"- he nodded to Sir Thomas, who was now balancing Hugo along the length of one thigh and Edward on the other- "and Lady Longbottom." He gave the mistress of the house a polite bow, and she returned it from her card game with a genteel dip of her head. "Sadly, Mr. Martin ought to return home to Twiggybroke."

Penelope gave them all a swift wave of her hand, then lifted it to cover a yawn.

"But I was going to ask Mr. Martin about dissolving potions," grumbled Cassandra. "They'd be much better for disposing of a corpse than throwing everything in a box and tossing it in a river. There are always fishermen." She seemed put out by the latter circumstance.

"Cassandra. _Plus de meurtre_," said Lady Longbottom dispassionately.

Tom Longbottom stood to give the guests a bow, while stealing glances at his wife, and William Avery did his best impression of a man who wanted to punch someone, but not anyone in particular, so that no individual would feel the need to be on their guard.

Cressida stood from her place at the piano bench.

"Miss Granger. Mr. Martin." She dipped slightly to Hermione and Mr. Martin.

She turned to Draco.

"Mr. Granger."

Draco nodded politely.

Cressida urged slightly forward, then came to an abrupt stop, as though she thought she'd left the stove on, then instantly recalled that she'd turned it off after all.

"You'll read, tonight?" she asked Draco. "Before you go to sleep?"

If Hermione hadn't been so absolutely horrified by the situation, she would have clapped her hands in glee as Draco's cheeks colored. She didn't think he had it in him.

"Oh. I suppose," he answered. "If I'm not hexed into next Saturday before I get the chance."

"Oh! But you couldn't be," Cressida said throatily. "Why would anyone hex you?"

Draco gave her one of his damned vulpine smiles.

He couldn't help himself. It was the only possible answer.

"I'm afraid you'd have to ask my sister the answer to that," he replied, looking sidelong at Hermione. "She's the one keeping track of all my indiscretions."

They left the drawing room with Mr. Martin having finished his song, and looping back around to begin it again. As they tootled down the path between the Hall and Twiggybroke Cottage, Draco kept a hand on one of the rear handles of Mr. Martin's chair, to prevent the whole rig from running off the path into the underbrush.

"_Me men must be crazy, me men must be mad, me men must be deep in despair-o…_" sang Martin, warbling at the top of his voice as his chair weaved to the left and then jerked sharply back to the right, wobbled under the torque, and righted itself by the grace of Draco's grip.

"Despair-o!" agreed Draco, blasting a mid-sized rock nowhere near Martin's chair.

"_For to let you away from my cabin so gay, and to paddle your way to the shore, shore, shore…_"

"Shore! Shore! Shore! Hermione, join in," pressed Draco. "It goes 'Shore!' just here."

Hermione held up her skirts and marched headlong up the ramp to the cottage, and opened the door.

Grix was sitting at the table with his spectacles perched on the tip of his nose. There were stacks of parchment in front of him, an ink well, and a pile of books. He set down the quill he was holding, stood, and shuffled toward the door.

"_I deluded your sailors as well as yourself, I'm a maiden again on the shore, shore, shore…_"

"Ten points to the maiden!" enthused Draco. "Well played."

"Dear gods, what have you let him do?" Grix shuffled toward the door, and peered into Martin's wide, glittering eyes. "You daft old man, do you have any idea what you've done to your liver?"

Martin began his song again. "_There is a young maiden, she lives all a-lone, she lives all a-lone on the shore-o..._"

"Shore-o, shore-o, alright," said Grix, patting Martin's hand where it tapped out of rhythm to the tune. Grix turned his attention to Draco. "You," he began, pointing a finger at Draco's face, "had one job to do."

"Two, actually," said Draco, helpfully. "And I did one of them." He puffed up his chest in pride.

Grix blinked at him. "Right." He looked at Hermione. "Miss Granger, please fetch me the sobriety potion in the cabinet in the washroom, and then mix up a teaspoon of the white powder in the brown crockery jar in the cabinet to the left of the cook stove with a glass of water."

Hermione hustled to the washroom, grabbing the neatly labeled vial of sobriety potion from an organized rack of medicines, then found the crockery jar. Its contents smelled strongly of oranges, and turned a pleasing shade of tangerine when dissolved.

Grix handed the potion to Mr. Martin, who scrunched up his nose in displeasure as the potion took away his drive for balladry, then followed Martin's hand anxiously with his own ready to catch a dropped cup while he tipped back the orange drink.

"What's that then?" asked Draco, leaning against the bookshelves and jamming his hands in his pockets.

Grix glared back at him over his shoulder.

"It's the best bits of oranges, dried and powdered up. Keeps him healthy as can be. Hopefully he won't be sick as a dog in the morning."

"It's delicious!" Martin tipped his glass at Draco. "Tart."

"Hermione calls me that, too," nodded Draco.

"I've never-" hissed Hermione.

Draco frowned. "It's implied. And unwarranted."

Grix did not flog Draco, nor did he throw him out of bed.

Draco was already out of his jacket and had unfurled and discarded his cravat when Hermione crossed the landing from her room to his, dressed in only her chemise and corset, holding a book she'd forgotten to put down.

She determined that she'd sliced through enough laces. She steeled herself, and knocked on his door.

"I need your help," she said, turning her back to him as he opened the door. "I can't untie this infernal garment, and it seems excessive to have Margaret come dress and undress me four times a day."

She heard him lean against the door frame.

"You want me to undress you?" he asked.

"Yes, and don't be a pervert about it."

He said nothing else, and she felt him begin to work his fingers into the ties at her back.

"Found another book to snuggle under the covers with?" he asked after a moment, peering over her shoulder at the red-bound volume in her hands.

"I did," she answered, looking at the cover. "It's another of Martin's surveys of his research. Gods, I wish I had the full laboratory papers for these experiments. In this one he appears to make an actual disappearing potion, and one that keeps food indefinitely unspoiled, just until it's eaten, when it reverts to its usual rate of decay."

She jostled slightly under his hands at her back.

"Fascinating stuff," he agreed. "I do like to read in bed, you know."

"We all like to read in bed, Malfoy."

He laughed outright, though he tried to stifle it, and she followed, pressing her hand over her mouth.

They grew quiet again while he worked.

"Done," he said, finally.

She turned around, holding her corset up with her arm slung over her chest.

"I've never called you a tart," she said, looking down at Draco's bare feet. "Or whatever the male equivalent of that term might be."

In her peripheral vision, she watched him tip his head to one side. "It's been implied."

She looked up.

In that moment she felt, under his unwavering gaze, that she was the last biscuit in the tin.

She shook her head to clear it.

"As I said." He stepped back into his room, and put his hand on his door to close it. "Unwarranted."

Her brow furrowed. "But I thought…"

"We have an agreement, do we not?" he asked.

Hermione bit into her lip. She wanted to shout at him, and tell him where he could put his agreement.

Her agreement, if she was being honest.

It had always been hers.

"Goodnight, Hermione," he said.

He turned, and as he retreated, his door closed softly. She was left standing in the darkness of the landing, alone with a book.


	5. Chapter 5: The Visit

For a short while in the early part of the morning, it rained.

Hermione lay with the edge of the bed linens pulled to her chin and looked out the window at the dripping leaves of an oak tree.

It was an indecisive and weak-willed sort of rain at the opening of what would be a clear day, and its lack of force or purpose had a melancholic effect. She had been in shock, she realized, and distracted by gowns, soup spoons, and the thrill of unknown books and potions, but now, in the lull of a dreary morning, she began to appreciate the scope of her predicament for the first time.

She felt a sense of loss, and beyond that, if her thoughts turned to the broken metal of the Time Turner, the creeping edge of fear. She'd been shuffled backward in the deck of time, locked in a place she didn't belong, and now relied on the generous natures of people she ultimately could never repay.

She was stuck and uncertain, both of which she hated. And because miserable thoughts always appreciate company, she found her mind bending relentlessly towards her last morning with Ron.

They'd woken together too early, wrung out and limp from crying, and with near comedic liberality, she had begun to cry again. Her chin rested on his chest, and she watched the light from the bedroom window they would no longer share filter through his eyelashes.

When a pair of her tears dripped arrhythmically onto his skin, he looked down.

"What is it?" He ran the tips of his fingers along her brow.

She swallowed before she spoke, and when she did, her voice was choked and damp. She never cried beautifully.

"Someone else is going to have your children."

His thumb arced across the top of her cheek, once, and then again.

He nodded.

"Don't cry," she said. "We shouldn't both cry."

"But it's sad."

And it was.

Of course, it hadn't happened yet.

200 years prior, someone knocked on her bedroom door.

"Come in."

Draco entered tentatively and paused in the opening.

Hermione's head rested in the crook of her bent arm, and she didn't turn her face away from the window to look at him.

"I can come back later," he said, and turned to leave.

"It's alright." She rolled over onto her side and faced him. "What do you need?"

He stepped into the room. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," she said, hoping that she looked and sounded it.

"You don't look fine."

Blast him.

Hermione sat up. "Thank you, Malfoy. I'll take your opinion on what I look like before I've gotten out of bed under advisement."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What can I help you with at this early hour?"

He hesitated before he spoke. "I'd like the Time Turner. I'm going to bring it over to the Manor and see if I can't repair the outer ring."

Hermione sat up farther. "We discussed this." She pressed her lips together when he rolled his eyes. "Don't roll your eyes at me. We've had mixed experiences altering magically impregnated metal. It can and does go smoothly, but there was a real concern that you weren't going to be able to regrow your fingertip that time we had to reshape the lens mounting on the Potentiograph. That was with me standing right there."

He held up a fully intact hand. "I recall. But as much as I'm loath to admit it, we're spinning our wheels a bit here. I'll be cautious, and if it doesn't seem like it's going to be workable, we'll think of something else."

She breathed out hard.

"Do _not_ blow yourself up. I'll be extremely put out with you if you do."

"I swear to you that I will do everything within my power to avoid blowing myself up."

She turned to the little nightstand next to her bed and pulled open the drawer. "Here, then." She held out the leather bag with the Time Turner.

He crossed over to her and grasped it.

For a moment, she didn't let go, and gave him a penetrating look.

"If anything happens," she began, and then stopped to search his face. "You'll come back for me, won't you?"

Something fierce sketched itself into the margins of his expression. "Do you honestly need to ask me that?" She shook her head and let go of the bag.

He took it and turned to leave the room, but when his hand was on the door, he glanced back over his shoulder.

"We'll make it home," he said. "It may take us a while, but we'll get back." His brow bent in thought, and he turned to fully face her. "I know that we're rarely serious, Hermione." She stiffened. "But I hope that you know"— he stopped again and studied his shoes. "I should think it was obvious that—"

She cut him off. "Now's not the time to begin being earnest, Malfoy. Go and make your attempt. Don't lose a limb, though. I couldn't possibly stand the whinging."

He looked back up at her, and smirked. "I'll try to keep it to a fingertip."

Margaret McClure dressed Hermione in a pale pink cotton gown decorated with pink silk rosettes, which she suggested was best for a morning call to the Averys. Again, she assaulted Hermione with cosmetic spells while she was off her guard.

Hermione caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror in the downstairs hall, and noted with approval that she'd shed whatever unguarded look of unhappiness Draco had caught in her that morning. Curled and primped and plumped, she looked pink and fresh as an ingenue— a feat of no small genius, as she was, in reality, a lost and bewildered Ministry researcher who'd cocked up catastrophically and was most likely out of a job.

Grix sat at the breakfast table with Martin, serving him from a large crockery bowl.

"Good morning, Mr. Martin." She nodded in greeting. "Good morning, Mr. Grix." She sat down at the table and put her napkin across her lap.

Grix tipped his head to her and passed the bowl, which contained cubes of sweet potato along with a rainbow of cooked vegetables. She dished herself a portion, then poured herself a cup of green tea. They ate in silence while Hermione peered nervously towards the front door.

"He'll be alright, I'm sure," said Grix.

"Who will?" Hermione asked disingenuously.

"Your brother. He'll be fine, whatever it is he's getting up to. He's like a cat, isn't he? Ends up standing on his feet. Got their own writing reflex, some do."

"I suppose that's true," Hermione agreed.

"Bonk!" Martin enthused, tapping his forehead lightly with his open hand and smiling at Hermione. "Knock himself silly."

"Oh, come off it, you old gaffer," said Grix. "You're off your chump. Don't scare the girl, no one's knocking themselves silly."

Hermione tilted her head and considered the elf. He wore a tweed vest over a starched white shirt, the polished gold chain of a pocket watch standing out smartly against it. "You write, Mr. Grix?"

Grix took a bite of broccoli, and chewed it thoroughly while looking at her.

He swallowed, then dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. "I do."  
"That's wonderful!" Hermione blew at the surface of her tea. "I'd be very interested to hear about it."  
Grix nodded. "Well. I suspect we'll have time one of these days. Now," he switched gears, "Martin and I are going to finish up our breakfasts and take our constitutional."

"To the stream," Martin added. He clapped his hands together. "Tadpoles."

"That's right. We'll see about getting you wading this time, old man."

Hermione watched Grix straighten Martin's napkin in his lap and pick up a stray cube of potato from the table.

"How long have you been free, Grix?" she asked suddenly.

He looked at her sidelong. "Not the least bit curious, are you." His voice was congenial, though—for him, anyway—and after a moment, he sat back and regarded her.

"I've worked for Martin since February of 1649."

Hermione blinked. "You've what?"  
"With wages. I hope that answers you well enough."

She wasn't entirely sure that it did, but before she could ask any clarifying questions, there was a dull thud from upstairs that rattled the window frames followed by Draco's unmistakable shout.

"Gods, DAMN!"

Hermione stood and threw her napkin down on her plate.

"You'll excuse me, Mr. Grix. Mr. Martin."

Holding up her skirts, she rushed down the hallway, then threw herself breathlessly up the stairs.

She yanked his door open, and when she found his room empty, crossed the landing and slammed into her own bedroom.

He was lying on her floor, curled into the foetal position with his hand cupped over his left eye, groaning like he'd been shot.

"Draco! Dear gods, what's happened to you?" She fell to the floor beside him, and gripped his wrist.

"I'm alright, Granger. Keep your knickers on." He peered at her with his uncovered eye. "Or don't. Your call. Merlin, I wish I had exploded, this smarts terribly."

"What happened?" She pressed at his wrist. "Is there anything broken? Missing? Shall I grab a potions kit? Tell me what I need to do."

At that, he laughed.

"You can move that," he said, gesturing generally towards the fireplace. "I came in through your Floo instead of mine for whatever reason, and bashed my foot heartily against that cleverly placed medieval torture device you have there."

Hermione looked.

"You mean the chair."

"That's the one. They don't make them like that anymore, do they?"

Hermione released his hand and sat back on her heels.

"You stubbed your toes on my chair."

"I did," he confirmed. "What? Don't look at me like that. You're so judgmental. Tell me anything that hurts as terribly. I'll wait."

"Why are you covering your damned eye, you ass?"

He uncovered his eye.

"I've burned it, that's why."

A charcoal strip of ash bisected his cheek and eyelid. His eyebrow was also missing.

"Oh, good Lord. What happened?"

He sat up, and straightened his cravat.

"I'm saying this with alarming frequency these days, but unfortunately you're right. I made a welding attempt."

"I told you we'd need to recast the circle, Malfoy."

"Yes, I took that under consideration," he said irritably, "but I wondered if we might at least try the other option. And yes, we'll need to melt it down. At least now we know that's likely to be a bit touch and go."

She glared at him.  
"At some cost to me, I've admitted that you were correct, alright? The Time Turner bit me back rather sharply for trying the wrong thing, and now, if my sense of touch isn't mistaken, I'm short of something critical."

He stood, and looked in the small mirror mounted to the left of Hermione's door.

"Oh, good gods. That won't do if we're going calling. I'm going to trouble Grix for a regrowth potion. I'm sure he has something up that worrisomely crafty sleeve of his."

"You still want to call on the Averys?"

"Of course. We'll snatch the box out from under their noses and come back straight away, then regroup about the Time Turner. I suspect repairing it together may involve an elaborate deception, which I hope you're up for. Setting off all manner of sparks and filling up the place with the smell of burnt magic is undoubtedly going to put the dietary fiber committee onto us."

"We could just tell them, you know. Martin was a cutting edge academic, I'm sure they won't be too terribly shocked that we've time traveled."

"Of course. And I'm sure they'll not be in the least bit troubled that we've been lying to them about being Martin's cousins."

"Martin must know we're not, though."

Draco squinted. "Have you conversed with Martin, Granger?"

"I have, and he's as sane as either of us."

"Speak for yourself."

"Grix certainly suspects something," she said. "He's been wary of us from the beginning. It might be liberating just to come clean about the whole deception."

Draco stared at her. "There are times when I get a very clear sense of our House differences, and this is one of them."

Hermione stood and adjusted her skirts.

"I suppose you've at least eliminated the possibility of a simple weld, so thank you for that. I'm sorry you've had to sacrifice one of your eyebrows in the process. I know how proud you are of them."

He watched himself raise and lower the remaining half of the pair in the mirror. "They're one of the finest sets in England, Granger. I have every reason to feel protective." He sighed morosely. "Now let's see about regrowth, and then we'll go and enrage William Avery."

The weather cleared and the day was fine, so they walked.

Hermione allowed Draco to help her over the stiles, and she said nothing about his visibly regrowing eyebrow until the final crossing, when they were confronted with a wide patch of soggy ground. Without warning, he grabbed her by the waist rather than her hand and lifted her down off the lower step. She fell forward into his arms with her palms splayed against his chest, and bit back her desire to pummel him long enough for him to carry her the brief distance to the dry portion of the path. The moment he set her down, she pushed him hard to an arm's length away and glowered.

"Rather presumptuous for someone sporting as much over-eye stubble as you are."

He frowned, and touched his brow protectively. "A sacrifice I made in your name, I might add."

"In my name?" she scoffed. "I'm sure I'm not the only one who's quite finished traipsing around the antiquarian countryside interfering with the romantic lives of the locals. Unless, of course, you're quite comfortable and would like to establish a home here."

As she spoke, they crested the hill above the Avery estate.

The patch of rain had washed the world clean, and the lawns rolling from the crisply delineated gardens at the back of the house shone luminous in the morning sun.

A pair of small figures flew over the grass on brooms, moving at speed directly towards one another.

"Merlin, they're going to collide!" cried Hermione.

"Yes, they are." Draco looked on with clinical detachment.

The figures came together with a natural, correct sort of violence, and fell to the ground while their mounts raced on without them for several metres before slowing down and settling on the ground, in the fashion of children's beginner brooms. The figures, briefly separated in the fall, rolled towards one another over the grass, and then reconnected, flailing their arms at each other's abdomens. Hermione could hear the conviction, if not the content, of their distant shouting. Eventually, they both gave up, rolled apart, and stood. One of the figures looked up the hill, turned to whack their companion in the chest, and pointed at Draco and Hermione.

They waved with aggressive enthusiasm, then took off at a run across the lawn and around the corner of the house.

"Excellent," said Draco, waving back. "It seems there may be additional Averys. I hope to make them all like me as well as William does."

"Keep stealing the hearts of the girls they're in love with and I'm sure you'll do very well for yourself."

It was a pleasant walk of another ten minutes to arrive at the white gravel drive at the front of the Avery estate. There was a carriage parked outside the door with a pair of placid thestrals harnessed to the front. As they approached, the door to the carriage burst open. The interior was luxurious, upholstered in silks and plush green velvet, and from it tumbled a pair of preposterously filthy little boys. They landed on the gravel, and without further fuss, picked themselves up and seemed prepared to take their leave. But before they could make their way to the location of their next catastrophe, they noticed Hermione and Draco standing in the drive.

Hermione wasn't good at identifying the ages of children, but she supposed they were somewhere in the general area of six or seven.

"Hullo," said the smaller one. "You're the ones we saw on the hill. Charles said you were restless spirits coming to snatch me in my bed, but I knew you weren't any such thing."

Hermione shook her head. "No, not restless spirits. We've no plans for snatching, either. My name is Hermione Granger, and this is my younger brother Draco." She ignored Draco's theatrical sigh.

"I'm the younger one, too," said the little boy.

Draco gave him a slight bow.

"We're cousins to Mr. Martin over at Twiggybroke Cottage," Hermione continued. "We're staying with him just now, and we've come to pay a call to your family."

"Are you here to fetch William away for company?" the larger boy asked. This must have been Charles, the one who made up ghost stories. "Only he promised us broom rides this afternoon, and if you take him we won't like you at all."

"That'll be the full set, then," Draco noted.

Hermione shook her head. "No, we won't take him from you. We're only here to say hello. What are you two up to?"

The boys turned to one another, seemed to communicate telepathically, then looked back at Hermione and Draco. "We've left off jousting, and now we're back to playing beetles with the nasty pig," said Charles.

He lifted something up to show them.

It was a snuff box.

A thin layer of dried dirt was caked into its engraved surfaces, and around the seam, where the two halves came together, blades of green grass stuck out in ragged, lank strands like a chaotic skirt. It looked as though it had come out the other side of a questionably themed collegiate party having played at one too many drinking games.

Its circular eyes leered at them in feral challenge.

"Merlin, what have you done with the swan?" Draco looked at the boys sternly.

"What swan?" the smaller boy asked. "Do you mean the dirty pig? Mother says it's a cat, but it isn't one at all. It hasn't got a proper tail, only an abominable pointy rump."

"Abominable," Hermione offered. "And I'm still seeing a badger."

"Mother said he's a hair loom and we oughtn't touch him, so we've taken him into the woods," the smaller boy continued. "He's a wicked pig and we hate him. We've been feeding him grass, and Charles found the greenest beetle that's ever been, so we're keeping it in his belly."

He reached over to the box, still in his brother's hands, flicked open the latch, and lifted the lid.

Hermione half expected it to erupt in uncontrollable fingers of vengeant lemon yellow arcs of electricity the moment it was opened, and withdrew towards Draco. She pressed herself against his arm, which he lifted to wrap around her, oing a firm, reassuring squeeze.

Instead of lightning, they were treated to the sight of a shining metallic green beetle twitching heroically on a bed of leaves.

"We've named him William, after William," said Charles. "Only don't tell Willy we said so. He's been in such a foul mood." He wrinkled his brow. "Don't tell him we said that, either."

Draco nodded to them. "Could I have a look at your pig?"

Charles looked down at the box, then back at Draco warily. "You're not going to give him back to Mother, are you?"

"Why would I give it back to your mother?"

"Well it's only that we didn't ask, did we."

Draco lifted his sparse eyebrow. "I won't say a word to your mother, if you'll let me take a look at it."

The boy hesitated, then held the box out.

Draco had almost grasped it, when the front door of the manor house opened, and a woman charged out onto the drive.

The boy swiftly hid the snuff box behind his back.

"John. Charles. You've been called in for breakfast _several_ times." She was a plain, direct looking woman, who appeared to be hovering at the brink of forty. She wore an unadorned deep blue cotton gown, and had her brown hair pulled back from her face in a pragmatic fashion. Her attention was fixed intensely on the two little boys, but as she advanced, she woke to the fact that there were strangers standing in her drive. She slowed, and brushed her hands briskly against her skirt. "Oh dear. Hello." She gave Hermione and Draco a brief nod, then turned back to the boys. "Have you been troubling our visitors?"

The smaller of the two, who Hermione deduced was the one called John, hopped from one foot to the other and shook his head.

"We haven't been troubling anyone. When is Willy going to take us out on his broom, Mother? We've been waiting all morning."

The woman looked around, absorbing the scene before her. "Have you been playing in Miss Parkinson's carriage?" she asked the boys.

"No," said Charles, apparently a fluent liar.

Mrs. Avery narrowed her eyes at her sons, shook her head, then sighed. She turned to Draco and Hermione.

"You'll excuse me, this is all terribly rude. I'm Mrs. Avery."

She looked at them both expectantly.

Hermione dipped in a curtsy. "I'm Hermione Granger, and this is my brother Draco. We're cousins to Mr. Martin."

"A pleasure, Miss Granger. Mr. Granger," Mrs. Avery replied. Draco bowed his head. "Any relation of Mr. Martin's is always welcome in my home. You'll excuse my sons. They've had a quiet spring here at home recovering from a bout of dragon pox, and they've grown unused to having company."

"They're no trouble at all, Mrs. Avery." Hermione smiled. "Charles and John were telling us about their adventures in the woods collecting beetles."

Mrs. Avery looked at her sons with stern devotion. "Of course. I'm just sitting down in the drawing room with Miss Parkinson, who I'm sure will be delighted to meet a relation of Mr. Martin's. He's rather a favourite amongst the young people. I'd be very pleased if you would join us."

She turned to her sons.

"And you two. Breakfast. _Now."_

"Aww," groaned Charles. "We've told you we're not hungry."

"Only the stinky pig is hungry," John concurred.

"The what?" Mrs. Avery gave them the look of the seasoned detective chief inspector.

Charles punched his brother noncommittally in the gut. "Nothing, Mother. We'll be in, we promise."

"Ow! You needn't have done that, you oaf," fussed John as their mother turned and made her way back towards the house.

"Yes, I had," answered Charles. "Race you to the elm by the lake."

"Tea?"

Mrs. Avery sat with relaxed propriety beside a polished table in the drawing room.

"Tea would be lovely, thank you." Hermione sat next to Draco at the edge of a silk brocade sofa, with her fingers folded in her lap.

In a chair near the door, a young woman in her early twenties sat in an impressively upright fashion, looking patient and serene. Her hair was so dark as to be nearly black, and curled into glossy ringlets. Her clothes looked expensive. This was the visiting Miss Parkinson, dripping with the unruffled assuredness of the stratospherically wealthy.

While clearly fellow members of the upper class, the Averys seemed to possess a slightly more down-to-earth quality.

The drawing room of the Avery house was as stately and nondescript as the outside. It all had a quality of perfunctory splendor, as though it were a prefabricated castle that came complete with drapes and furniture for the country gentleman with more money than time.

And while it was as neat and elegant as Hermione supposed it ought to have been, there was an air of strain to its gentility. Hermione would have been hard pressed to identify two less physically similar homes, but the Avery estate brought to mind nothing so much as the Burrow.

Both seemed, to varying degrees, just a little unhinged, as though a snitch might come crashing through a window at any moment and no one would flinch.

She considered Charles and John Avery, currently standing outside one of the drawing room's large windows, watching the gathered party with their noses flattened against the glass. They were able to do this at the same time as they continued to not eat their breakfasts. It seemed likely that the presence of completely untamed children added a specific sort of zesty seasoning to any family home regardless of the socioeconomics of the case.

Mrs. Avery picked up a bell and rang it.

She had the same brown hair and eyes, and the same assertively intelligent presence, as her oldest son William, who sat directly opposite Draco and Hermione on a sofa identical to theirs. He was currently occupying himself in an attempt to extinguish Draco through the crushing force of an unadulterated scowl.

Charles and John must have heard the bell through the window panes, because they began to hop up and down in a Pavlovian fashion. In no time at all, an elf wearing a handkerchief tied at a fashionable angle around its body entered the drawing room. It pushed a trolley weighed down with a delicate floral tea service and a tiered cake stand loaded with finger sandwiches, fresh fruits, and little cakes.

Draco leaned forward in his seat.

The Avery boys whispered to one another outside the window, then Charles firmly pushed the side of his brother's head with an open palm, and they both ran off, disappearing from view.

The elf deposited the tea cart next to Mrs. Avery, who began to fuss with a wooden box that sat next to the tea service. It was revealed to hold the household supply of loose tea leaves. With a silver spoon, Mrs. Avery measured out several heaps into the large teapot, and gave it a stir.

"How long do you and your sister intend to stay with your cousin in the neighborhood, Mr. Granger?" asked Mrs. Avery.

Draco cleared his throat. "We haven't made that determination, as of yet. We have no timeline."

William's left nostril hitched up irritably.

"But surely you have business elsewhere," he said, crossing and recrossing his legs.

"We certainly do," answered Hermione.

"It'll keep, though, won't it?" Draco asked rhetorically. "Elsewhere isn't going anywhere. In fact, I'd say we're steadily making our way towards it by the hour."

Mrs. Avery poured the tea with practiced ease, and after dropping in two lumps of sugar and pouring milk into it, a cup made its way around to Miss Parkinson. She sipped at the rim with well bred delicacy, then primly set the cup against the saucer.

"How do you take your tea, Miss Granger?" asked Mrs. Avery.

"One sugar and just a touch of milk, please." She opted against asking whether they kept soya on hand.

As Mrs. Avery gave another performance worthy of a practical exam in a finishing school, Hermione thought ruefully of her own habit of smacking her tea bags smartly against the inside of her favorite earthenware mug while dusting biscuit crumbs off the front of her shirt. She tried to keep her biscuit pilfering to a minimum, and if Draco noticed any missing from the stash he kept at the back of his bottom left desk drawer, he never mentioned it.

When her cup made its way to her, Hermione brought it to her mouth with her pinky finger extended.

"Unnecessary," Draco muttered.

"Leave me alone. I'll have you know I've recently been shown some things about the management of younger brothers," whispered Hermione. Her cup made no more noise than Miss Parkinson's had as she set it down in her saucer, and she quietly congratulated herself.

When it was Draco's turn, he went for broke and admitted to four sugars and a great deal of milk, and drummed his fingers anxiously against his thighs while staring down the cake stand.

Before he'd finished accepting his cup, the door to the drawing room crashed open.

The young Avery boys came fumbling in, looking determinedly innocent. Charles held a squirming toddler underneath its arms, and the marauding party was trailed by a House-elf wearing what seemed to be the remnants of a net curtain as a dress with a lace doily on her head, so wildly anxious she had gone purple in the face.

"Oh, Merlin." Mrs. Avery sighed. "Boys, take Jamie out of here at once. This is ridiculous. He's supposed to have been sleeping. Did you wake him?"

Charles set down the little boy, pink-faced and with a tangle of cornsilk hair swirling about his enormous round head like a model of a heavy element. This was quite clearly a powerful individual, and all eyes were drawn to him as he marched across the room, a minuscule general entering the fray, shoulders tilted towards destiny. He reached his mother, and hauled himself into her lap with his blunt, boneless little fists clenched into her skirts.

"This is beyond even you two," scolded Mrs. Avery, dropping any sense of decorum. "Please, forgive the intrusion, Miss Granger. Mr. Granger. Miss Parkinson." Mrs. Avery had gone faintly red herself, and the worried elf, ostensibly the warden of the nursery, stood pulling her ears by the door. "This is my youngest son, James. Charles and John will be removing him shortly."

James popped his thumb into his mouth, grabbed one ear, and made himself comfortable against his mother.

John looked like he was set to burst. Without further adieu, he did.

"Charles wants the cake with the blue flowers, Mother, but I said I'd like to have it first."

Mrs. Avery drew in a breath, and nailed her middle sons to the floor with a stare.

"Cake," she said. "Where are both of your manners?"

Charles looked at Draco, and spoke mechanically, as if by rote. "We're very happy to have you here today. It's been most pleasant to meet you." To his mother, he raised his chin triumphantly. Then he turned back to Draco, and chose to live a life of boldly taken chances. "You don't want the blue cake, do you?"

"Charles." Mrs. Avery's voice rang with the authority of the school bell. Her pupils were not in the least concerned.

"I want the blue cake," said John.

Charles whacked him across the chest with an open hand.

At last, Mrs. Avery unfurled a tone that communicated it had done with legislative patty cake and was greasing the runners on Madame Guillotine.

"Outside. Both of you. _Immediately_."

"Aww! But you've told us so many times to eat this morning," John whinged.

"I told you to eat _breakfast_," argued Mrs. Avery.

"Alright, you tyrants." William leaned forward, giving the impression he wasn't above getting up and hauling little boys out of a room by the back of the britches. "Leave Mother alone while she has visitors or I'm rescinding my offer to take you up on my broom."

"Aww!" repeated John.

"You're a spoilsport, d'you know that, Willy?" Charles crossed his arms over his chest.

"I'm a spoilsport who can fly a broom. Now go and sail your dinghy or something and leave us alone."

During this exchange, Draco leaned forward and swiftly palmed the blue cake from the cake stand, then immediately after it, a white one topped with a bundle of red icing flowers.

"That's an excellent idea, William," agreed Mrs. Avery. "It's a lovely day, and you haven't taken _The Foul William_ out for a sail for a few days."

William pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Once I'm Willy's age, I'll eat all the cake I like," Charles muttered. "You'll see whether I don't."

"You'll make yourself sick," his mother replied.

"I'm sure I'll like to, very much," said Charles. It was a flawless retort.

As the boys grumbled their way towards a set of doors opening to the rear gardens and the lawns that stretched down to the small lake behind the house, they necessarily passed the end of the sofa where Draco sat.

Hermione watched Draco pass each of them a cake by way of rather good sleight of hand. She thought they might betray the exchange, but while their faces may have ever so slightly brightened, they both took the booty with the unruffled cool of practised pickpockets.

"Lord, Malfoy, they've been sent from the room for misbehavior," she muttered under her breath as they walked outside. "You'll only spoil them."

"That's ridiculous," he argued. "They're growing boys, they need sustenance."

"Cake is not sustenance."

"Of course it is."

As she turned to blink at him, he brought a third cake she hadn't seen him grab to his mouth, and shoved it in at one go.

"Merlin, Malfoy," she marvelled.

"Now, where were we?" Mrs. Avery asked.

Miss Parkinson—who Hermione had entirely forgotten wasn't a piece of luxurious furniture—finally spoke.

"The invitations are set to go out tomorrow morning," she said in slow, perfectly formed, shockingly bland tones, "but I'm anxious to announce that we're going to have a ball at Thornwood Abbey on Saturday, July the 7th." If that was anxious, Hermione was concerned that when Miss Parkinson sounded calm she might be halfway to a coma. "We'd be gratified if you would attend." She spoke very generally to the room. It seemed as though the handful of words made her bored with hearing herself, and she stopped talking.

"How wonderful!" Mrs. Avery replied. She turned to William. "William, won't that be lovely? It's been some time since you've been at a ball in the neighborhood."

"Indeed," William answered. His eyes flashed briefly to Draco.

"As cousins of Mr. Martin, you will, of course, be included in the invitation his household receives," Miss Parkinson said to Draco and Hermione.

Hermione sat up straight. "Oh, I'm not sure"—

"We'd be delighted to accept, Miss Parkinson," said Draco.

William dropped against the back of his sofa and crossed his arms.

For a clear two minutes, everyone sat sipping at their tea and not looking at one another.

"Are you a racing man, Granger?" William asked at last, breaking the silence.

Draco glanced up. Hermione noted that he'd grown surprisingly responsive to someone else's name in a short period of time. "Broom racing, do you mean?" He smoothed an invisible dust mote from his trouser leg. "Of course."

"I wonder if you might be interested in a little friendly jaunt around the property." William's look was sharp and calculating. "Say sometime this week."

"I haven't brought a broom with me, but if you've one available to borrow, I'm game. Name your time and place."

"Tomorrow."

Draco shrugged. "If you'd like."

"What an excellent idea," said Mrs. Avery. "It's important for you boys to get outside and stay active." Hermione didn't doubt it was important to Mrs. Avery that boys frequently went outside and stayed active. "You ought to see about going round the trail at the Longbottoms'," Mrs. Avery continued. "I'm sure Tom Longbottom could be persuaded to join you, although I suspect you'll have Sir Thomas out on a broom as well. The girls always enjoy spectating."

"Do they not race?" Draco asked. "The girls, I mean."

Mrs. Avery looked perplexed.

William sat forward slightly. "Did you have a little run-in with the shaving spell this morning, by any chance?" he asked Draco. He cocked his left eyebrow and pointed to it.

Draco lifted his fingers to his patchy brow. It had almost entirely filled in, but there remained a thin line of pale skin bisecting it at an angle. Before he could answer, James, the stowaway toddler, lifted his arms stiffly over his head and slid through his mother's grip. "Jamie," she scolded him, to no effect. He landed on his bottom, and without pausing, rose to stand, then piloted himself into a dramatic faceplant on the seat of the sofa between Draco and Hermione.

"Oh," Draco commented, pulling away from the child. James swept his arms across the upholstery as though he were experiencing a euphoric heightening of his tactile sense. After a moment, he turned his face towards Draco. "Hi," he huffed.

"Hello," remarked Draco flatly.

James sidled along the edge of the sofa until he came to Draco's left knee. He reached out and patted it experimentally with one podgy hand.

"What is it that you want?" asked Draco. "I'm finished dispensing cake."

The child wound his fist into the fabric of Draco's trouser leg, and hoisted himself onto the sofa, where he sat back on his heels and leveled his dictatorial stare at Draco.

"Gods help us," Mrs. Avery groaned. "Corby, please come get Jamie and take him back to the nursery."

The elf standing in the doorway began to move cautiously around the edge of the room with her hands out to the sides in the fashion of a wrestler.

James, sensing an early end to his unplanned visit to the drawing room, moved into Draco's lap and assumed his favored position, leaning back into Draco's chest with his thumb in his mouth and his hand at his ear. From there, he watched the progress of the elf around the room with discerning detachment.

"You'll please excuse me," said Miss Parkinson. "I'm to call on the Longbottoms at Bugg-Buntley Hall. I understand my sister will be there with her husband this morning." She rose smoothly from her seat.

Hermione followed Mrs. Avery's lead and stood, offering Miss Parkinson a shallow curtsy.

Draco nodded at her, but sat stock still with his hands on his knees, looking at the back of the head of the boy sitting in his lap.

As Miss Parkinson removed herself from the room, the elf continued to advance.

"Mr. James had better come with Corby," said the elf. "It's Mr. James's nap time."

James yanked his thumb from his mouth. "No." Having made his point, he resumed his business with the thumb.

"Oh, leave him be," said Draco. "He's not troubling anyone."

Hermione looked at him in disbelief.  
"Mr. James needs his rest," Corby insisted.

"Mr. James needs cake, don't you Mr. James?" asked Draco. James nodded.

"You are going to be completely unlivable as a father," Hermione hissed.

"I'll be fine." He leaned forward and grabbed a tiny pink-frosted cake from the tray, and handed it to the child. James took it cautiously, squeezed it, and then gave it a lick.

Draco patted his back briskly. "Go on, enjoy it. You never know when someone might compel you to eat cruciferous vegetables for breakfast."

There was a loud series of distant shouts from outside, which Mrs. Avery pointedly ignored.

Draco stood, folding his arms underneath the boy's bottom. James sat atop this structure as though it were the seat of a stiff chair and Draco's chest was the back.

James made no fuss, only continued to pull at his ear and lick suspiciously at his cake while Draco walked, with no sense of urgency, towards the windows. They strolled slowly along the length of the room, looking every bit the very tall and faithful retainer to an uncommonly little lord.

"Do you see your brothers?" Draco asked the boy softly. "Do you see how they're sailing very poorly? Their line is slack, and they're going nowhere. You'll do better than that, won't you?" He turned to look at James without a hint of irony.

James nodded gravely.

"Of course you will," Draco confirmed.

Mrs. Avery watched this bizarre demonstration with infinite affection. William, on the other hand, looked ready to pull the ornamental swords from the coat of arms over the fireplace and run Draco through.

Something finally clicked in Hermione's mind.

"Miss Parkinson said she was going to Bugg-Buntley Hall to see her sister. Are she and the new Mrs. Longbottom related?" she asked Mrs. Avery.

"Yes, indeed. Didn't you know?" Mrs. Avery sipped at her tea.

"No, I wasn't aware. So, the new Mrs. Longbottom is a Parkinson. That's fascinating. Did you hear that, Draco?"

He spared half a glance from his saunter. "A Parkinson and a Longbottom? Wonders will never cease."

"Have you spoken with Pansy recently?" asked Hermione.

Draco considered. "I suppose I haven't. She's been busy on the weekends. Why do you ask?"

"No reason."

He shrugged and turned his attention back to the baby. "Over there, only a few kilometers away, on the other side of the orchards, is Malfoy Manor," he murmured. "It's the most majestic home in all of England." He had been walking back and forth across the room, but stopped to point the boy in a southeasterly direction.

"Do you expect Mr. Martin can be induced to come to the ball?" Mrs. Avery asked Hermione.

Hermione thought. "I'm sure he'll be more than willing to, provided there's cake, and he has a shot at the punch bowl."

"I'm quite sure there will be cake," Mrs. Avery said. "Would you like a piece just now, Miss Granger?"

"Oh, no, thank you very much."

Draco had resumed walking, but suddenly he stopped and grew quiet.

Hermione turned around in her seat to look at him.

He continued to hold James, but his brow was wrinkled in thought as he stared hard out the window and across the lawn.

"Are they—" He hesitated, then without saying another word, he stepped briskly over to Mrs. Avery and put James down in her lap. The moment the boy was safely out of his arms, Draco dashed to the set of doors leading to the garden, tore them open, and was out like a shot.

"What on Earth—" Mrs. Avery was interrupted by William, who jumped up and trailed swiftly after Draco with a frown.

Hermione stood and moved to the windows.

She watched Draco running hard across the manicured walks, his hair streaming. When he reached a low hedge at the border of the garden, he leaped over fluidly and continued at a ferocious pace down the sloping green lawn towards the lake.

_The lake_.

Hermione peered closely at the water.

Out in the center, a child's dinghy sat empty. The water surrounding it was still.

"Oh, Merlin. Charles and John," she breathed.

She quickly crossed the room and went out the garden doors, then followed Draco and William's trail, finding a gap in the hedge rather than trying to leap it in her skirts.

Far ahead, Draco continued to run. As he did so, he pulled off his black suit jacket and threw it to the ground. William sprinted just behind, and removed his jacket in the same way.

Before either man could reach the edge of the lake, a movement over the tops of the trees drew Hermione's attention.

There was a figure on a broom less than a hundred metres away and closing in fast.

It was a man, leaning hard across the length of his broom in the way Hermione had seen Harry do as Seeker in a speed descent, coming down from the heights of the game at a screaming velocity towards the ground of the pitch.

The man's hair blew back from his face, which was trained fiercely at the surface of the lake even as he pulled up at the reeds at the edge of the water, flung himself off his broom with extraordinary grace, and tossed it carelessly to the ground.

He stripped out of his jacket and threw it roughly down next to his broom. Then, without hesitation, he ran into the water.

Draco was only a short distance behind, and William a few paces after him, but once at the depth of his thighs, the man dove forward in an urgent arc, and was lost under the surface for a long time. He came back up some distance out, and began hauling himself across the water with incredible speed.

Draco arrived at the edge of the lake and didn't stop. He splashed into the water, and like the unknown man had before him, pushed through until he was at a depth where he could dive, and then he set off in a fluid crawl stroke to the middle of the lake. William arrived at the shore just after, panting hard, and repeated what the other two men had done, so that all three moved tirelessly through the water.

After another minute, Hermione arrived at the lakeshore, pressing a palm anxiously to her chest. She was left to watch, clutching her skirts and feeling so ornamental and redundant she wanted to scream.

She thought she saw a little hand, accompanied by a little face, break the surface of the water, and heard a far away gasp, but as quickly as it had happened, it was gone.

The unknown man rapidly reached the little dinghy, where he spent a moment treading water and searching below the surface. At last, he dove.

"What's going on?" asked Mrs. Avery, coming up alongside Hermione with her face twisted in unschooled panic. It seemed she had successfully given James over to Corby for safekeeping.

"I think"—Hermione breathed deeply to calm her frantic heart—"the boys are in trouble. It seems they're under the water."

Mrs. Avery clapped her hand over her mouth as she cried out. Hermione edged closer to the lake. She watched uselessly as the man emerged, took an enormous breath, then dove again.

Draco reached the same spot and disappeared as well.

Hermione knew rationally that the time from the beginning of Draco's sprint to that moment couldn't have been more than three or four minutes, but the moment that Draco and the unknown man were down below felt endless. The surface of the lake remained empty except for William's churning form, and the forlorn empty boat.

At last, the unknown man burst upward, holding a limp child in his arms.

Mrs. Avery cried out, and fell to sit on the ground. Hermione was terrified to see only one of the boys, and then Draco surfaced holding the other, the boy's arms clasped tightly around his neck.

The boy Draco was holding immediately began to cough and cry.

Both men began the laborious journey back to the shore with their cargo, swimming at a crawl with their faces turned upward, while William turned back and swam ahead of them.

Mrs. Avery had stood again, and paced anxiously at the edge of the water.

William walked through the reeds, his clothes dripping, and stood ready to help. When Draco and the man were in water shallow enough to stand, they both ran to the shore with the boys bundled in their arms.

Hermione recognized the smaller boy, John, with Draco. His soaked hair was dark and plastered to his forehead, and water streamed from his clothing as Draco passed him into his mother's arms. He cried pitifully, and his teeth chattered, but he was awake.

The unknown man held Charles, who lay silent and still.

"Someone fetch blankets," the man ordered as he stretched Charles down on the grass beside the lake. Then he pulled out his wand.

Hermione stood by and watched him cast a warming spell, then he looked up at her. It was only for the briefest second, but all at once, she was overwhelmed by the familiar warmth of his penetrating blue eyes. She sucked in a breath of shock, and then as though she'd been doused in the cool water of the lake, she came to her senses and rushed into action.

She strode quickly to the prone child and fell to her knees beside him, pulling out her wand. The spell she began to use on the little boy was basic magical first aid, but she'd never had to use it before, and as she cast, her hands shook.

"Steady," said the man. He reached out and gently grasped her hands in his. "You're doing just fine, but try to still yourself. It will work faster."

Hermione did not look into his face again, but his hands, long-fingered and spattered with tiny freckles, were cool over hers, and she shivered slightly under their touch.

It was a water drawing spell, ancient and stable and relatively easy to cast. In a moment, water began to pour from the corner of the boy's mouth and from his nostrils.

Next, she cast a quick diagnostic spell she'd learned during the war, which showed the boy's heart was still beating. He simply needed to breathe.

The spell for which was—

She drew a blank.

"_Respiros."_ The man whispered the incantation, and cast with a strikingly beautiful efficiency of movement. Hermione was so caught in admiring it that she almost missed the cry of the little boy on the ground in front of her.

Charles' eyes opened, round and hazel, reflecting the sun climbing behind a loose and shifting flock of clouds congregated in the careless blue sky. Between sobs, the child sucked in great, shuddering breaths.

He breathed. He lived.

Mrs. Avery ran to Charles, cradling John in her arms, and drew both children to her. All three sat and wept. Hermione rose to her feet and stepped back.

"Will, go and fetch Cressida." The man's voice was low and quietly authoritative. "Charles and John ought to be looked over and she'll know what to do."

William nodded, and with a pop, he Apparated away.

Draco stood on the grass a few metres off, shaking water out of his ear. His white shirt was plastered to his torso and his hair dripped into his eyes.

The unknown man rose, and with a sigh of relief, he looked at Hermione.

He was probably younger than Hermione by a couple of years, and recklessly handsome. He had one of nature's capriciously beautiful faces, whose collection of imperfect parts ought to have added up to a plain and uninteresting sum, but instead, chose to arrange themselves through complex algebra into the sort of loveliness that renders the observer a little senseless. He looked as though he smiled rather a lot—in fact, he was doing it right then—and Hermione wondered if he ought not give off doing so, as she suspected she was smiling right back. His eyes were an unpolluted, crystalline blue, and he had a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose and over his cheeks that made him look youthful and a bit roguish.

He was tall—as tall as Draco—and long-limbed, but not gangly. He was, instead, lean and muscular. She knew this because she could see his chest and arms quite clearly under the wet white shirt he wore, translucent and clinging ruthlessly to his frame.

She was staring. She lifted her eyes.

His smile had broadened, lifting laughingly at one corner.

He'd caught her out. He thought it was amusing.

"Are you quite alright, Miss—" He raised an eyebrow.

"Oh. Yes." She cleared her throat. "Miss Granger." She felt herself turning even pinker than she already was under Margaret's ridiculous spellwork.

"Miss Granger." The man tilted his head and tossed his soaking hair back from his face. It was auburn, but she supposed, once it was dry, it would be something more like copper.

"I realize the circumstances are a bit shocking, but please allow me the liberty of introducing myself," he said. Behind her and to the right, Hermione heard the pop of Apparition, immediately followed by the hushed voices of William and Cressida Longbottom.

Hermione didn't shift her eyes from the stranger for a second.

She waited for him to continue, but before he could, John Avery sat up and stared in his mother's face.

"Has Miss Parkinson gone, Mummy?" he asked through a hiccup.

"Yes, she has, my darling," answered Mrs. Avery, shifting to make room for Cressida, who began casting intricate medical spells on Charles that Hermione had never seen.

"Oh." John's bottom lip began to quiver.

"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Avery.

"Promise you won't be angry with us, Mummy."

"Of course I won't be angry with you, my precious one."

John sighed in relief, but looked at his mother sheepishly.

"It's just that—" he stalled. "It's only that we've left the nasty pig in her carriage."

"What the _f_—" Draco cut himself off.

The auburn haired man leaned down and tugged softly at John's forelock. "A nasty pig, John? Sounds like trouble. We'd better help you find him, hadn't we?" He straightened, looked at Hermione, and winked.

"But William's inside him, Mummy," John cried before hiccuping again.

"No, my treasure, William's right here," Mrs. Avery reassured him, gesturing to her firstborn son.

"Not Willy," John insisted. "William the beetle. He's ever so green, we'll never find another like him."

William the man put his hand across his eyes and sighed.

The stranger laughed hard, and it was a sound made up of everything good and true about friendship and family.

"As I was saying," he continued, pushing down the last of his laugh and bowing in a way that was both unimpeachably elegant and scandalously flirtatious, "my name is Roland Weasley."

"What the _fu—"_

Only this time, Draco didn't stop himself.


	6. Chapter 6: The Race

Hermione's hair was a primordial wilderness of curls, tendrils of it striking out in every direction across her pillowcase.

She pressed her hips down into her mattress and arched her back, tilting her head to the side and stretching open the damp expanse of her throat.

Draco leaned over her and glowered. "Come with me, Granger."

The fabric of her chemise bunched up around her waist and clung to the sweat gathering at the curve of her lower back. Her bed linens were in an equal state of devastation, twisted and untucked.

She groaned.

"I told you, I don't want to."

Draco turned away from her and sighed.

"It's going to be weird if you don't."

"No, it isn't. You're fine on your own. When have you ever worried about whether or not I come with you, anyway?"

"Well I'm worried about it now," he said. "I feel like you should care at least a little bit about how well I perform." He looked genuinely hurt.

"I've been led to understand that you have plenty of other women to care about your speed and stamina. I don't understand why you need me to as well. It's a chore for me."

"But it's generally expected that you come. It will be a poor showing if I go off without you. I don't care to explain to other people why I wasn't able to bring you along."

"No one is going to be bothered in the slightest. Tell them I wasn't in the mood." She shut her eyes tight. "I'm going to lie here and relax while you do whatever it is that you need to do, and no one's going to give it a second thought."

"Why not?"

"Because this race is completely daft. You're going tearing around a forested track on a 200 year-old broom—"

"The broom isn't 200 years old at the moment."

Hermione gave him a withering look. "What's the worst broom model you've ever flown in your life?"

"Well…" He leaned away from her and swiped reflexively at the scar bisecting his eyebrow. "We all had to use those ridiculous Shooting Stars for flying lessons first year."

"Oh! How could I have forgotten? It's absolutely true that we rode shoddy brooms for an extremely limited period of time nearly thirteen years ago. I'm sure whatever vintage model they've got for you to borrow over at the Longbottoms' will be a lark." She sat up on her elbows and tugged on the front of her chemise. "Gods, it gets hot up here at night."  
"There are spells for that, you know. From the looks of it, you don't go easy on your bed linens, either." He plucked at a stray corner of her coverlet. "Doing a bit of calisthenics before you knock off?"

Hermione tugged her sheets straight. "I like to keep limber. What sort of sports costume is that you have on there?"

Draco looked down. "How do you mean?"

"Your trousers are—" She weighed her words. "Well it's just that they don't leave much to the imagination."

"I'm going flying, Granger," he said. "I'm dressed appropriately."

She fell backwards onto her pillow. "So what is it that you want from me? To come over and cheer you on while you beat William Avery into submission in front of the girl he'd probably be proposing to this summer if it weren't for you and your thighs?"

"Who ever said anything about beating William Avery?" He considered her. "My thighs? Your level of concern with the fit of other people's trousers is, itself, concerning."

She rose and shoved at him with both hands.

"Get every part of your legs off my bed."

He got up and walked to the door, looking as sure of himself as ever.

"I'll meet you downstairs, then?"

Yawning, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and kicked them back and forth while she stretched her arms over her head. "Alright. But only so I can have a laugh at your expense when you go tumbling off into the underbrush and muss your hair."

"You want to see what my hair looks like after a bit of a tumble?" His smile was infuriating.

"No! Put your smirk right away." She bit back a laugh. "Leave."

"I'll expect all the familial felicitations due to me when I win this race, you know," he said over his shoulder.

Though it was thrown with both strength and passion, her pillow struck the side of her door rather than the back of his head.

The air over the expansive lawns of Bugg-Buntley Hall smelled heavily of the lavender growing along the borders of the gravel walks at the lower edge of the garden, its stalks rustling with the activity of scores of tawny butterflies.

Hermione leaned against the back of a wooden bench shaded in the bower of an aged elm, its branches flush with summer green. Beside her, Mr. Martin dozed in his chair. Capless in the heat, his hair floated around his head colorless and insubstantial as filaments of dandelion seed, and his breath stirred the petals of the fat, scented peony Cassandra Longbottom had tucked into the folds of his blankets.

His spectacles had slid down his nose as he slept, so Hermione had removed them and now held them folded in her lap. She turned a page of her book, ignoring the shouts and high-pitched screams of the Longbottom girls ringing out from the bottom of the lawn.

"I hope that you'll pardon me, Miss Granger."

She lay a hand in the binding of her book and looked up.  
Roland Weasley stood just outside her circle of shade, a quarter of a smile at his mouth and the loose curls of his hair shining copper in the mid-morning sun.

"What can I assist you with, Mr. Weasley?" His smile was highly communicable, and Hermione found she wasn't yet inoculated against it.

"I regard it as the height of ill-breeding to interrupt a woman while she's reading," he said, stepping towards her. Hermione's smile pulled a fraction wider. "But I'm going to take the risk of you believing me an absolute churl," he continued, "and ask what has so thoroughly captured your attention while the rest of the party has been otherwise occupied."

Hermione turned the book over in her hands and ran her fingertips across its title, _Entheogenic Potionery and the Alchemy of Consciousness_, embossed with gold lettering.

Looking up again, she held her hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun reflecting off the clipped grass. "It's one of Mr. Martin's books." She shifted towards the end of the bench. "I'll freely admit that I haven't grasped its finer points just yet."

Roland sat down beside her and regarded the yellow leather cover.

"I understand that his work is fascinating, but to some degree impenetrable," he said. "May I take a look?"

Hermione handed it to him, and as he took it, he slid his hand between the pages where hers had just been.

Without losing her place, he leafed through the first few pages, his bright blue eyes ticking back and forth over the tiny print. There were numerous densely packed diagrams and complex potions formulas, written in the same shorthand symbols Hermione had learnt at school.

"Merlin, what a mind," he said. He passed the book back to her, and as she received it, she slipped her own hand back into her place. "Would you be so kind as to give me the loan of this, while I'm in Wiltshire?" he asked. "Martin's books are available in the library at Oxford, but we're kept rather occupied at our other studies. And, of course, here I have the advantage of the master himself if I'm struck by any burning questions." He peered around at Martin, peacefully a-snooze and lightly snoring.

Hermione was grateful for Martin's apparent tranquility. He'd been agitated all morning, so much so that Grix very nearly refused to give his blessing for an outing. Grix was only appeased by Hermione's solemn assurances that their cousin would be encouraged to frequently sip cooled water, under no conditions would gain access to wine, and would not be given more than the most conservative morsel of anything sweet, should it be on offer.

Roland seemed to find Martin's relaxed napping equally as pleasing, and his smile, as he turned it towards Hermione, was easiness itself. She flushed with a familiar warmth down to the tips of her toes inside their flimsy satin shoes.

"I'll have to ask Grix and cousin Martin, but I'm sure they'd be willing to part with a fresh copy if Martin will give me author's permission to conjure one for you."

"Oh! Have you reproduced texts before? That's a terribly underappreciated Transfiguration skill."

"Grossly underappreciated!" Hermione said passionately, shifting to the edge of her seat. "It's simple enough to make a copy that looks like it ought to on the outside and is full of absolute nonsense, but if you want the text to be fully intact—"

She cut herself off and turned her head, distracted by the distinctive throaty shout of Cassandra Longbottom.

Draco had helped Cassandra up onto his broom, and there she sat: sideways, with her ankles crossed chastely, hovering at waist height. She was clearly agitating to be released, but he held firm to the handle and spoke to her earnestly, gesturing between her and the broom.

"I'm going to be quite shameless and beg you to join the rest of the party on the lawns," said Roland as he rose from the bench. "There's been talk of little else besides Miss Granger all morning with the Longbottom girls. I find I've developed a rather ferocious curiosity to learn about you for myself."

Hermione felt terribly self-conscious.

"Are you nearly ready for your race?" she asked, steering the conversation away from herself. She marked her book with a scrap of parchment as she rose from the bench, and tucked Martin's spectacles into his blanket beside the soft pink bloom before trailing after Roland.

"More than!" he said over his shoulder.

She studiously avoided staring at his sculptural back end in his tight tan leather trousers, some version of which all the men had worn for the occasion. Like Draco, Roland was dressed in a white shirt, slightly more fitted than she'd seen the men wearing up until then, and there was a far less formal configuration of fabric at the throat. Hermione thought of it, with no small degree of pleasure, as an athletic cravat. He wore sturdy-looking black knee-high boots, a set of brown leather arm guards, and had a pair of leather gloves tucked into the back of his trouser waist.

"Do you play Quidditch, Mr. Weasley?" Hermione asked. She looked back over her shoulder to make sure that Martin was still sleeping.

Roland laughed, and the look that he gave her as he loped over the grass was full of congenial mischief.

"A little, Miss Granger," he answered.

"You're being facetious."

"Never!" He laughed again.

The spectators faced a break in the line of trees that allowed for a long, open view of a section of the well-kept path circling the wooded acreage of the Longbottom estate.

Isadora and Penelope sat together on a large picnic blanket. It was laid out in front of an oval table flanked by a pair of white-painted wrought iron chairs, where Lady Longbottom and Mrs. Longbottom were settled beneath wide lace-trimmed umbrellas. Lady Longbottom wafted herself with an elaborately decorated silk fan, while Mrs. Longbottom silently knitted away in thin white wool.

On the table, dishes of cold sliced meat, cheeses, bread, green salads, and fruit sat under a cooling charm. There were bottles of a pink liquid, too, all of it ready to be enjoyed while watching grown men chase after one another on their brooms.

"Is your cousin happy, Miss Granger?" Isadora asked Hermione as she approached.

"Our retreat to the shade was a success. He's sleeping quite peacefully," Hermione answered. "I won't move him just yet."

"I wouldn't disturb him for the world. Can I offer you a drink?" Isadora indicated the table behind her. "It's uncommonly warm this morning."

Roland lowered himself to sit on a corner of the picnic blanket and sat up with his arm propped over one knee, watching Draco and Cassandra at their flying experiments.

Hermione sat, too, positioning herself so that she could watch Martin for any signs of wakefulness.

"Thank you, Miss Longbottom." She tucked her book beside her and pressed a palm to her forehead. "It is awfully muggy today."

Isadora rose to mix a drink, pouring pink liquid from one of the bottles into a glass, diluting it with cold water from a pitcher, and dropping in several fresh raspberries before handing it to Hermione.

Several yards away, Cassandra laughed unreservedly from her sideways perch on Draco's broom and tried to goad him into letting her go.

"Release me, Mr. Granger!" she shouted, striving to twist herself to the side and lean forward at the same time. "Or I'm going to fly right round and knock into you like a game of bowls."

Beside them, Cressida pressed her hands together in front of her chin and laughed nearly as heartily as her sister.

"Yes, let her go!" She clapped her hands. "Cassie, make him let you go."

"I certainly won't if you're going to knock into me," said Draco. "You're a violent thing, aren't you?"

Near a stretch of crumbling low stone fence being incrementally swallowed up by the woods, William Avery pulled a pair of Quidditch goggles down on his forehead and watched as Draco finally let go of his broom. Cassandra moved out over the lawn in a wide circle, followed by Cressida at a jog.

"Go faster, Cassie!" shouted Cressida. She looked back over her shoulder, blooming and happy in the sunlight. "Mr. Granger, is she going fast enough for you?"

Draco shook his head. "She can go as fast as she likes. Only—Miss Cassandra! Remember what I told you about holding your balance slightly towards the back of the broom!"

Tom Longbottom finished adjusting the leather strap of his goggles, and slowly pulled on his gloves.

Beside him, Sir Thomas engaged in stretching exercises. In his tight leather trousers, and with his goggles perched on top of his head, he rapidly squatted down and swung his arms straight out in front of him, punctuating the movement with a deep-chested "Ho!" Next, he rose explosively to his toes, spreading his arms out to the sides at a forty-five degree angle, and shouted "Ha!" He followed this sequence with several startlingly aggressive twists of the waist that made Hermione's spine ache. Then he ran in place, lifting his knees nearly to his barrel chest for eight or ten steps while slapping each thigh with the alternate hand before starting the series anew.

Draco kept his eyes glued to Cassandra, breaking his vigil only to glance occasionally towards the group seated on the picnic blanket.

"You can go up on mine if you'd like, Cressie," William called, gesturing to his broom.

Cressida was still chasing after her sister, but slowed and looked back at William. She breathed hard, the color blossoming high in her cheeks, and her golden curls frayed in the humidity.

She glanced at Draco, then Cassandra. She seemed to deliberate, then sighed, gripped the fabric of her skirts in one hand and trudged over the lawn to meet William beside his broom.

"Shall I give you a hand?" he asked. Hermione recognized something in his voice and in the tilt of his brow. There was something familiar about the lift of Cressida's chin, too, and the narrowing of her eyes as she allowed William to grip her around the waist and hoist her to sit on his broom.

"Is that alright?" he asked her. Cressida nodded.

As he released her, she gripped the handle in her fists and looked determinedly forward.

"Miss Granger!" shouted Cassandra, banking into a turn nearby. "Do you fly?"

Hermione shook her head vigorously. "No! I do not."

"Tosh!" Cassandra banked again and circled around in a short horizontal loop. "Let Rolly take you up!"

Hermione tensed and steeled herself against looking at Roland.

"Oh, Merlin. No." She gripped her book like a talisman. "I don't fly unless it's a question of life or death."

Cassandra pulled to a stop beside Hermione, looking entirely in control of the broom. Her eyes were bright and fierce. "But Rolly's a genius in the air, Miss Granger. He played Seeker for Gryffindor for ever so many years."

Roland plucked a blade of grass from the lawn and twisted it around his fingertip.

"They really oughtn't to have let him play so early," Cassandra went on, "but he was that tremendously good. I can't tell you on how many occasions I've screamed myself hoarse egging him on at the pitch. And you could have played professionally, couldn't you, Rolly?"

Roland shook his head, but smiled.

"You could have," Cassandra insisted. "I heard Daddy talking about it to Mr. Avery. Only you had to go and play for moldy old Oxford, which isn't half as exciting."

"There's slightly less Transfiguration research going on in professional Quidditch than we do at Oxford, Miss Cassandra," said Roland.

Cassandra wrinkled her nose with displeasure. "I rescind your status as Quidditch Captain. Retroactively. It's removed from the record." She waved her hand. "We did without a Head Boy that year as well. Hogwarts remembers you not at all."

He shone his genial fraction of a smile on her. "Shall I not have sat for my N.E.W.T.'s either? They'll boot me from Oxford, you know."

Cassandra raised a singular pale brow. Having flown at a respectable clip, her hair was more windswept and untamed than her sister's. "As to that I have no opinion. And I shan't talk about N.E.W.T.'s." With that, she had done with Roland and turned back to Draco. "How do I go faster, Mr. Granger?"

Draco had been standing quietly, watching the party with a hand at the back of his neck.

His mouth twisted with uncertainty. "If I'm being honest, you really need to straddle the broom."

Cassandra sat up tall and clapped her hands. "Indeed!"

Without a hint of hesitation, she hiked her skirts up to her knees and slung one leg over the broom handle. She kicked off and swept up beside Draco.

"Like this?" she asked.

Lady Longbottom's fan stalled mid-sweep. "Cassandra," she said indolently. _"Tu ne devrais pas mettre ça entre tes jambes."_

"Oh, Merlin, Cassie!" Isadora rose to her knees as if readying herself to march across the lawn and yank Cassandra off the broom. "You can't sit so, my darling!"

Penelope snorted and bit into a slice of pineapple.

Draco and Cassandra ignored all.

He scrutinized her posture. "As a girl, your center of gravity is slightly different than a boy's. It's lower. You have—and this is broadly speaking—different considerations of weight and muscle mass. It helps most girls to lean slightly back—"

Cassandra subtly shifted on the broom. To Hermione's eye, the difference seemed entirely inconsequential, but Draco's face lit up with excitement.

"Yes! Precisely like that, well done. Now if you hold your weight there and press forward from the shoulders—"

Cassandra Longbottom went off like a shot, coursing over the lawns of the Hall so fast that her hair came untucked strand by strand until it trailed out behind her in a waist-length stream of rippling gold.

Lady Longbottom sat up and pursed her lips, scandalized at last into a facial expression. Sir Thomas was moved as well, but in an entirely different direction, and watched his youngest child open-mouthed and beaming. As she looped back around and sped past him, ruffling his hair in her wake, he shouted, "Ho! Ho! Cassandra! What's this? Move on, you girl! That's it! Move _on!_"

"Well done, indeed!" Roland called out. The start of a smile that he seemed always to have at the ready broadened into a grand, uneven grin and a beautiful laugh.

"Bring it in, Cassandra," Draco called with authority, beckoning her with his hand as she barreled towards him.

She obeyed and brought the broom to a stop with a tight arc a mere foot away from him, her smile incandescent.

"You're a natural," Draco said, gripping his broom handle while she climbed down. "You'd have some catching up to do, certainly, but have you considered going out for Quidditch next year?"

Cassandra's laugh was slight and nervous, out of phase with the look of ferocity that had overtaken her face.

"That's not a very kind joke, Mr. Granger," she said, turning from him and heading towards the picnic blanket.

"It isn't a joke." He looked to Hermione. "When did girls start to play commonly at Hogwarts?"

Hermione looked at him in disbelief. "Are you aware that you're speaking at full volume?"

"I'm only saying that by rights, Cassandra ought to play next season," he said. "I realize even we were nowhere near parity, but—"

"I agree that girls ought to play." She spoke slowly and deliberately through a clenched jaw. "I'm sure that they will _very soon._"

He looked perturbed. "Alright, but how is it they've been able to hire for the Harpies before now? That's absolute rubbish."

"_Draco._"

Cassandra threw herself down beside Penelope, who sat up and used a wand she'd drawn from Hermione knew not where to begin coiling Cassandra's hair back on top of her head.

"Oh, Merlin. I need a drink." Cassandra was still catching her breath. "Are you having a shrub, Miss Granger?" She looked at Hermione's glass and her eyes grew wide. "Gods that looks fantastic."

Draco stood his broom on end against a tree and joined the rest of the party.

"Do you mind if I sit, Miss Granger?" he asked, and then he actually winked at her.

Hermione ignored him, but he sat down close to her anyway, stretched out his legs and leaned back on both of his elbows. "It does look good, Hermione," he said. He peered into her glass. "Oh, look at that. It's got raspberries in. You're set for the day."

Hermione sipped her drink. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

"I'm sure that you do."

"I'm sure that I don't." She feigned investment in the progress Cressida was making in her side-saddle meander around the perimeter of the lawns on William's broom.

Draco leaned in until his temple rested against Hermione's upper arm and tilted his eyes up at her.

"Are you seriously going to pretend that you don't recollect your French martini habit?" he whispered.

Annoyed, she bit into a raspberry and looked with a keen and quasi maternal interest towards the sleeping Mr. Martin. "That's only at Christmas."

"I am fully aware that it's only at Christmas," said Draco with a short laugh. "It doesn't make it any less real."

Cressida looped back around to William and stopped. Before she could dismount on her own, he grasped her around the waist and lifted her forward. She leaned into him, her hands gripping him at the shoulders, and Hermione watched as a look passed between them.

It was a silent conversation in two parts. William's face was reproachful, and upon seeing it, Cressida's became imperious, as if denying she'd done anything wrong and becoming affronted at the mere suggestion that she had.

He held her long enough to turn and set her down, and when he did, he didn't immediately let her go. His face was very close to hers, his look still chiding and with a hint of a challenge. Cressida tipped her chin forward, then sucked in a breath and swiftly pulled away. Her fingers flexed in the fabric of his shirt before she turned and ran to join the rest of the family.

"Nice ride, Cressie?" asked Roland, peering thoughtfully at the dour-looking William.

"I did." She sat beside Penelope and raised her chin proudly. "On with your race, then?" she asked, dusting off her skirts.

"I suppose we must, eh Granger?" Roland looked for a moment at Hermione, then flashed a grin at Draco that wasn't returned. Without haste he stood, went to fetch his broom and began to pull on his gloves.

Sir Thomas bounded over the lawn with the energy of a hare being chased by a pack of hounds and pulled up beside his elegant wife, leaning down to offer her his cheek. "For luck!"

To Hermione's surprise, Lady Longbottom pressed her lips to her husband's cheek quite tenderly, then stroked her long, delicate fingers over his beard before giving it a playful tug.

"You're only pacing them so they don't cheat, Father, I shouldn't think you'd much need luck for that," said Penelope.

"That may be! Even so, I wish you luck in all things, my pickle!" shouted Longbottom, bending down to smash his lips against the top of Penelope's mountain of curls. She waved her hand to shoo him away, but looked pleased despite herself.

Tom Longbottom approached his wife slowly and casually, then bent down and put a kiss that was neither slow nor casual directly against her mouth. She brought a hand to his jaw and sighed as he pulled away.

"Who shall kiss William?" asked Cassandra. She sent a sly glance towards Cressida, whose cheeks flushed hot. "Well someone ought to."

Cassandra hopped up, and with her skirts in her hands, ran to the unhappy William, threw her arms around his neck and planted a sisterly kiss on his cheek. "There you go, Willy. Don't go and smash yourself."

She turned her attention to Roland next. "You haven't turned out for the Falcons like you ought to have done, Rolly, but I'll kiss you for luck all the same." He bent down and she pulled up on her toes to give his cheek a peck before returning at nearly a sprint.

Draco sat upright and pulled on one of his leather gloves. He looked at Hermione sidelong. "Wish your younger brother luck?"

Hermione rolled her eyes skyward and shook her head. "Good luck. Be safe."

Draco paused in the adjustment of his arm guards and then shrugged. While he resumed tightening them down, Hermione took a swallow of her drink and chewed mercilessly at another raspberry.

She came to a decision.

"I'm always safe, I'll have you know," Draco began, turning towards her.

At the same time, Hermione leaned in to place a perfunctory kiss on his cheek.

The corner of his mouth where her partially opened lips met his was soft and warm.

He tasted of mint.

They both pulled back as though they'd been singed.

Draco locked eyes with her like a startled fawn for the length of a skipped heartbeat, then leaped to his feet and stalked over the lawn, yanking on his second glove as he went. He retrieved his broom and a set of goggles off the ground and pulled them on without so much as a passing glance back in Hermione's direction.

Hermione guzzled her drink, then began to cough on a raspberry seed.

The five racers found their places along a line Sir Thomas had marked arbitrarily across the packed dirt of the walk. Roland, William, and Draco were at the front, with Tom Longbottom and Sir Thomas taking up the rear.

Penelope joined them at the starting line with her wand in hand. She cast a spell that caused the line in the dirt to briefly glow, then she drew a white lace-edged handkerchief from a pocket at the side of her dress.

Each of the men lifted his feet from the ground and sat at the ready astride his broom.

"On your mark!" she called, lifting her handkerchief into the air. "Get set!"

William glared briefly at Draco.

Tom gazed at his wife.

Draco glanced sidelong at Roland.

Sir Thomas stared straight ahead.

Roland turned to look across the lawn and waved.

Hermione kept trying to clear the raspberry seed from her throat.

"Go!" Penelope dropped her handkerchief and squeaked in surprise as the draft from the kinetic burst of the brooms taking off swept a cloud of dust up her skirts.

It had never occurred to Hermione that it was possible for anything to be more tedious than Quidditch until she spent twelve minutes and twenty eight seconds doing nothing more than waiting for a handful of men to come through an opening in the forest on their brooms.

Almost as soon as the race had started, the Longbottom women began chattering about the ball at Thornwood Abbey.

They speculated about who in the neighborhood would attend, and who would dance with whom, and opined about which of them looked best in the various usual colors for gowns.

Hermione opened her book again. She was in the middle of a dense passage explaining the potential for a shared state of consciousness between users of a theoretical potion when the robins that had resettled in the ground after the start of the race ceased their scrabbling at the dirt. They lifted their heads, then burst upwards in a whorl of terror as Roland and Draco came flying out of the forest, both nearly flattened against the handles of their brooms.

They appeared perfectly matched, neither one so much as a hair's breadth in front of the other. Clustered with them and only slightly lagging was William.

Tom Longbottom came through a broom's length after William, and Sir Thomas trailed all four looking intently focused on his duties as referee.

The Longbottom sisters clapped and whooped, cheering in a scattershot and disloyal fashion for "Rolly!", "Will!", and "Mr. Granger!", and there was a loud and discourteous "Tom, you lout, shift it!" from Cassandra.

The racers' passage blew the dust and tiny stones littering the walk out to either side, and left a flurry of desiccated leaves swirling in the air behind them.

Just like that, they were gone.

For a brief while, the women talked about the closeness of the race, comparing the posture and intentness of the riders, but then their conversation returned to the excitement of the ball, and to the possible configurations of the tables.

Hermione cracked open her book once more, and after watching to make sure a shift in Mr. Martin's position didn't mean he'd woken up, she resumed her interest in moon-dried bog-myrtle ground widdershins into a powder of medium coarseness, in which the grain ought to remain clearly visible to the naked eye.

The second time the men burst through to the repeated cheers and abuses of their spectators, Hermione barely looked up long enough to register that Draco had pulled ahead, but that his lead was perhaps enhanced by Roland turning to wave cheerfully at the party as he passed. William maintained his position as well as his grave countenance, while both the Longbottom men hung on to their places at the back.

Martin finally stirred, yawning like a bear in late March and blinking out at the sunny lawns. Hermione went to fetch him.

"Did you sleep well, Mr. Martin?" She ducked beneath an arm of the elm to join him in the shade.

"They off?" he asked, still blinking.

Hermione pulled his spectacles from his blankets and tucked them back over his ears.

"They're off," she assured him. "Would you like a raspberry?"

By the time she had him settled beside Lady Longbottom in his chair, eating happily from a plate of fresh fruit and cheese and drinking a shrub, the men came through once again to head into their last lap around the woods.

Roland had overtaken Draco and had the lead, and as they passed, Hermione saw that Draco was frowning deeply and looking back at the head of his broom.

She shielded her eyes and squinted, but before she could determine what might be wrong, Roland, Draco, William, Tom, and Sir Thomas had already sped through and were lost again around the first bend in the track.

"Miss Granger," said Martin hoarsely. "Miss Granger?"

Hermione crouched down beside him and laid a hand on the arm of his chair. "What is it, Mr. Martin?"

He placed his hand over hers. His massive, owlish eyes were wide with concern. "Tell him it's too fast."

Hermione turned her hand up to grasp his, dry as parchment. "I've told him already. He doesn't listen to me, though, does he?"

Martin shook his head dolefully. "No. He shouldn't go to France."

Hermione pressed his fingers. "He'll be just fine. I promise. And I don't expect that he'll go to France any time soon."

He frowned. "I'm going to miss you."

"I'll miss you, too." She reached up and brushed a wisp of hair away from his eyes. "But we have a little longer."

She poured him a glass of cool water and urged him to drink it. Then she made him a sandwich. And then she waited.

The robins had returned, popping about their business beside the path, getting into petty arguments and occasionally lifting their heads and listening intently before resuming their scratching at the grass.

"Does anyone know how long it's been?" Penelope sat upright, shielding her eyes and peering intently down the dark mouth of the forest trail. "I didn't take a time because the finish line spell takes care of that."

Isadora opened her reticule and pulled a little silver watch from inside. She squinted at it, then took out her spectacles and put them on.

"It's been nearly an hour from the start," she said finally. "Just shy, but still..."

Hermione's stomach turned with anxiety. "Are there any hazards on the trail?"

Penelope shook her head. "Not precisely. I suppose if they were really intent on winning and took one of the sharper corners too quickly it could be a problem, but they're all skilled flyers. And it's all for a lark, I can't imagine any of them is especially concerned with winning." She looked at Hermione questioningly. "Are they?"

Hermione stood and began to walk towards the trail. "Shall I go and see about them?"

"No!" Cassandra jumped up after her and put a hand at her elbow. "They're going to come through at an awful pace, and you won't want to be in their path when they do. Give them a moment. It's possible there's been a broom malfunction and everyone's paused."

Hermione sat back down and nipped at a fingernail. Irrationally, she resented the poor robins, who ought to have been scattered to the four winds with their eyes bulging ten minutes ago.

At last, a hint of motion in the dark recesses of the trail had the Longbottom women and Hermione on their feet, lifting on their toes to try and get a better look.

When the men came up the slight rise of the trail at last, they were walking.

The party was headed by Sir Thomas and Tom Longbottom, holding the corners of what Hermione gradually determined was a stretcher. They both had brooms tucked under their arms, but Sir Thomas carried two.

She stuck her thumbnail between her teeth and bit down hard. As the rear of the stretcher came into view, her heart took off at a terrorized sprint, and her chest grew so tight she struggled to breathe.

Roland and William were at the back.

The scene on the lawn took on the warped quality of a dream.

As though it were a film in which she could observe but not act, she watched Cressida take off at an open run to meet the men as they laid Draco down on the grass. He wasn't moving, and Hermione realized that what she had perceived as a handkerchief tied around his head was his hair, and that it and the top quarter of the stretcher were soaked in red. Cressida had her wand out the moment she arrived at the prone figure on the lawn and rapidly Vanished the stains before dropping to her knees and casting spells that threw a row of glowing graphs into the air before her. She looked them over with her sharp eyes and then began to give orders to the men.

"Tom, go and fetch Healer Frederickson from the village," she said. "Apparate there. Don't waste any time." She turned to Sir Thomas. "Father, can you please go into the Hall and have the elves come down and help bring him up to one of the rooms. It's imperative that he's not stirred from this position in the smallest degree. Repeat that to them. Make sure they understand." Sir Thomas Apparated with no more than a sharp crack of empty air.

Cressida bent over Draco again, whispering incantations and floating the tip of her wand over the length of his neck and down the mid-line of his chest with slow, deliberate movements.

"You oughtn't to have moved him at all before I could see to him," she said to no one in particular. "But he's extremely fortunate, and I don't believe you've done any more damage. I've stabilized his spine, and he should be moved indoors as quickly as possible."

She looked up at William, and her beautiful dark eyes pleaded with him plainly and without pride.

"Healer Frederickson isn't going to be enough."

He breathed hard. Hermione noticed for the first time that the front of his shirt was untucked and soaked with red, and that a long strip was torn away at the hem. The men must have used it to transfigure a stretcher. With a look of genuine pain, he nodded. "I'll go to London for Healer Bartholomew. I believe he owes my father a favor, and I'm sure that I can persuade him of the seriousness of the case."

Cressida reached up to him, and he took her hand. "Thank you."

He let her go and Apparated without another word.

"How can I be of service, Miss Cressida?" asked Roland.

Cressida looked around.

"Mr. Martin ought to be taken back to the cottage," she said. "I'm sure that he'll be much more comfortable at home with Mr. Grix. And Mrs. Longbottom I'm sure would like to go home as well."

Lady Longbottom had woken into action herself, and instructed Isadora, Penelope, and Cassandra to gather certain potions and ready a quantity of bandages and fresh linens before approaching Hermione and taking her gently by the arm.

Her expression was soft with care.

"I'm going to take you inside now, Miss Granger," she said, pressing patiently at Hermione's elbow. The low, even tone of her voice had previously seemed detached and uncaring, but was now soothing in its steadiness and calm. "I'll get you a cup of tea, and you can help us prepare linens if activity is what you need."

"Mr. Martin will need me." Hermione's throat felt as though it were closing down. "I ought to be the one to walk him—"

"Rolly will take Mr. Martin to the cottage. Please. Come with me, darling." Hermione stared at Draco's motionless form. Lady Longbottom squeezed her arm in reassurance. "Sir Thomas will be back with the elves presently to fetch your brother in. We'll do absolutely everything that can be done."

At that exact moment, Sir Thomas Apparated on the lawns alongside a trio of elves, who had the sturdy and calloused look of stable hands or general handymen.

"Up with him, steady as can be, as I said. We're headed to the guest room at the near end of the east wing," Sir Thomas ordered. They levitated Draco on the stretcher carefully up the slope of the lawn back to the house, with Cressida trailing after.

Roland crouched down beside Mr. Martin and gripped his shoulder. "Come on, Sir. Let's fetch you back to Mr. Grix."

Martin fidgeted in his chair, and his eyes swirled about as though he couldn't make any sense of the visual field in front of him. "The potion," he said agitatedly. "You'll fetch it down, won't you?"

"Whatever it is that you need, you shall have it," said Roland. "Shall I push you? Is that alright?" He turned to Hermione. "I'll come back soon," he said. "Can I bring you anything from the cottage?"

Hermione, allowing Lady Longbottom to steer her towards the house, shook her head.

"No," she said over her shoulder. "Everything I have in the world is right here."

Hermione's first cup of tea, taken at a small table in the entryway of Bugg-Buntley Hall, went cold and was discarded.

Healer Frederickson—somewhere in his mid-30s, with sandy hair and a kind face—arrived with Tom Longbottom through the front door. They climbed quickly up the stairs and a short while later only Tom came back down. Without saying a word, he took Hermione's hand in his and pressed it, then Apparated away.

Half an hour later, she'd moved to the drawing room and sat on one of the sofas. Beside her the little black and white cat called Hugo, which an elf had carried in to her on orders from Sir Thomas, slept on his back across the depth of the cushion with his forepaws held out straight in front of him. He tilted his head back in order to provide Hermione with access to his chin, but whether she scratched him or not, he purred to himself. His presence was possibly the wisest thing anyone had ever done to comfort her.

Isadora arrived and sat quietly beside her until she was called away by her mother, then returned to inform Hermione that Healer Bartholomew had come directly through the Floo in the bedroom where Draco had been laid. He had immediately taken charge of Draco's care, and would send down news as soon as there was any to be had.

"They would like us to bring them more bandages," said Isadora gently, and Hermione gripped her hand so tight that her knuckles turned pale.

"Have they said what happened?" Hermione asked.

Isadora shook her head. "Tom's gone home to be with Mrs. Longbottom, who is apparently quite shaken. My father or William will be able to tell you, I'm certain. Would you like a fresh cup of tea?"

Hermione looked down at her second cup, cold and untried in her lap.

"No, thank you." She set the cup and saucer on the table beside the sofa and looked at Isadora imploringly. "I need something to do."

They tore linen into uniform strips with a spell Hermione had never learned, folded them and sent them up to the sick room with an elf who looked at them with pity.

After that, Hermione felt driven to sanitize the kitchen while Isadora made herself busy at a tall chest in the pantry that held the family stores of medicinal potions.

Isadora packed up bundles of potions to reduce swelling and pain, salves for the healing of shallow wounds, and tinctures to bring on sleep, though Draco hadn't shown any sign of consciousness, and then she left to bring them upstairs.

Hermione was on her hands and knees disinfecting the tile around the hearth when she heard a familiar gruff cough, and turned to find Roland standing in the doorway that led out to the kitchen garden. Grix stood beside him, holding a grey tweed flat cap in his hands.

She had tied a sturdy apron over her dress—a frivolous thing in blue gauze embroidered with cheerful yellow and white flowers—and as she sat back on her heels, she gripped the coarse striped fabric and wrung it hard between her hands.

"I don't know," she said. She hadn't the slightest idea how she meant to continue, so instead, she covered her face with her hands.

She heard dusty shuffling footsteps, and then there was a hand at her hair, patting her like a little dog.

"It'll come right, Hermione."

She leaned forward to bury her face in the soft flannel of Grix's shirt and began to cry.

"It'll come right," he said again, patting the back of her hair. "Hey. Come on. Chin up." Hermione sat back and pressed at her eyes with the handkerchief Rolly Weasley handed down to her.

"I don't know what to do," she said plaintively. "And I always know what to do."

Grix Vanished the wet stain from his shoulder and pushed his half-moon spectacles up on his nose.

"Live long enough and you'll find that sometimes you don't." He reached into his chest pocket and pulled out a vial of a pearlescent gold liquid. "I've brought one of Martin's brews. You'll want to run this up and get it in him as soon as the Healers slow down and leave him to rest. They won't like it, so you might need to be clever, which I know that you are. But don't dally. Martin reckons he'll need to start it before morning."

Hermione took the vial and rolled it between her fingers. The glass was warm from having been in Grix's pocket. The potion inside was thin and swirled with currents of bright coral and melon orange as it caught the light. She sniffed and wiped at her nose with the handkerchief. "What is it?"

"It's for the brain," said Grix. "And with an ounce of luck, the spine as well. I don't believe he's bothered to name this one. Martin's field of research was mostly the mind, as I'm sure you've gathered from the books you've borrowed without asking. But he's got a real grip on how a living thing repairs itself, generally. He insisted I bring this particular one over. Give it to your brother in two doses. Once tonight and again in the morning." He turned his flat cap in his hands.

Hermione worked hard at holding back another round of tears. "Thank you."

"I'm not promising a favorable change in personality, mind," he added. Hermione laughed wetly. "But Martin's older than he has any right to be, and sharper than you might be aware, and it's not all down to my nagging."

Hermione thanked Grix again, and then again, warmly and profusely. Then she rose to walk with him to the door and watched him go, tromping between rows of onions.

She came back to the Hall slowly, letting the sun heat her cheeks and eyelids once she'd pressed them closed, then she leaned in the kitchen doorway.

Roland sat back with his hands gripping the edge of the long wooden work table, overhung with bunches of drying herbs. His chin dropped towards his chest, then he lifted his eyes to her. He looked worried, and Hermione wasn't sure whether it was on Draco's behalf or hers.

"What happened?" she asked.

"He was behind me. I didn't see it," said Roland. "But there's a sharp turn on the last quarter of the course that can make the head of your broom want to swing wide. Is he used to a different model, by any chance? Something made by a local craftsman, perhaps? Torque can be surprising."

Hermione nodded. "Yes. His usual broom is very different."

"There's a cluster of large stones just at that turn." He radiated deep sympathy and care as he spoke. "Will's as quick as they come, his reflexes are extraordinary, and he threw out a cushioning charm that slowed him down. If he hadn't—" He stopped. "I'm so very sorry, Miss Granger. You and your brother seem very close."

Hermione shook her head. "Oh, we aren't—" She pressed her lips together and swallowed. "I suppose, yes. Yes, we're quite close."

A pair of elves Apparated into the kitchen and seemed surprised to find Roland and Hermione there.

"I'm very sorry," said Hermione, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "We'll get out of your way."

"Walk with me?" Roland indicated the gardens beyond the door.

With gratitude, Hermione took his arm.

Dinner was served in the dining room, but Hermione couldn't think of eating. Instead, she sat on a chair that was placed for her outside of Draco's bedroom door.

She heard low voices within, but couldn't make them out and couldn't bring herself to use magic to listen. She wasn't able to focus on the words in her book, either, though she had exchanged Martin's potions text for a volume of John Donne.

She traced a finger over a line of print.

_For God's sake hold thy tongue, and let me love._

She snapped the book shut.

After dinner, Isadora brought her a cordial, which she drank, and then Penelope brought her another, distinctly larger glass of red wine.

Lady Longbottom came and forced her, by way of her own calculated complaisance, to retire to the room across the hall and dress for bed.

She undid the laces of Hermione's stays herself, and didn't ask about the leather pouch or the wand that Hermione drew from her bosom. Then she plaited her hair with the long, smooth strokes of a charmed comb.

"Would you like a sleeping draught, my dear?" she asked, pressing her cool hands to Hermione's shoulders.

She declined, and once Lady Longbottom had left, Hermione resumed her place on the chair beside Draco's door. Wrapped in a white dressing gown, with her eyes wandering over fields of poetry and seeing nothing, she waited.

She supposed she must have fallen asleep.

When she woke, Cressida was before her, with a hand on Hermione's knee.

"They're going," she said softly. "Would you like to come in?"

Hermione followed her into the room. It was low-lit by candles and steeped in the same biting, mentholated smell of an Apothecary.

Healer Frederickson was buttoning his jacket. He picked up a brown leather Healer's bag and stepped over to the Floo.

"Miss Granger," he said with a mannerly nod. He glanced at another man, older, tall, with a wiry grey beard and mustache. "Healer Bartholomew can fill you in. I'll be back in the morning."

Draco was tucked under a white sheet and coverlet, his arms lying limply at his sides. He slept. His chest rose and fell quickly and unevenly, and his head was wrapped in a neat swathe of white bandages. Hovering at the wall over his head, a row of charts glowed and shifted with a steady stream of information in hues of amber and bright blue, only some of which Hermione knew how to read.

She could tell that his heart was beating fast.

Cassandra had pulled an apron over the same dress she'd worn at the picnic, and had her wand out, Vanishing used supplies and Scourgifying items on a wooden table beneath the curtained window.

Hermione looked inquiringly at Healer Bartholomew as he packed up his bag.

"Your brother is a very fortunate man, Miss Granger," he said. "Fortunate that his fall was blunted by Mr. Avery's quick thinking, fortunate that in moving him, his friends—through sheer dumb luck—avoided a greater catastrophe. He was most fortunate, however, to have chosen to throw himself off of a broom at a reckless speed while in the company of Miss Cressida Longbottom."

Cressida didn't look up from her work.

Healer Bartholomew retrieved his coat from the back of a chair and pulled it on.

"We've put the necessary repairs in motion, and over the course of several days, the gross insults to his cranium, vertebrae, arms, and ribs will fully heal. But we can't know the extent of the damage to his ability to use his extremities or whether his cognitive capacities have been compromised until he wakes."

"So he might be paralyzed," said Hermione. "And he may not be the same."

Healer Bartholomew glanced towards Cressida. "Cressida tells me that your brother has a keen intellect. And that he's an active, athletic man."

Hermione nodded.

"I have strong hopes that, in time, he will still be both." He stepped to the Floo. "But you should prepare yourself as best you can for the alternative. Miss Cressida"—he bowed his head genteelly at the tired-looking girl—"your efforts have been extraordinary. Try and get some sleep. Healer's orders. I'll see you bright and early in the morning."

With a flare of green light at the Floo, he left them.

Cressida finished cleaning the work table.

"Would you like to keep watch over him tonight, Miss Granger?" She pointed to the luminous charts over his head. "I can show you what to look for. I know that I would find it very hard to leave him, were he my—" She cleared her throat. "I would feel just as you do, were he my brother."

Hermione followed along as Cressida taught her to read his vital signs and specific measures of his healing progress, should she like to follow them. Cressida straightened Draco's linens, then pulled a chair up beside the bed.

"There's a chaise just there as well," she said, pointing to the corner of the room, "should you need to sleep. If any of his vital signs go awry there will be an alarm. I'll hear it and Healer Bartholomew and Healer Frederickson are only on the other side of the Floo."

She pulled off her apron, folded it, and placed it on the wooden table.

Hermione sat down in the chair.

Cressida returned to the bedside and pressed her fingertips against the pulse point at Draco's wrist.

"I know I can read it just there," she said, glancing up at his heart rate on the monitoring spells. "But I find it reassuring to feel it for myself from time to time."

"You're very fond," Hermione said. Her heart ached terribly—for Cressida, for William, and for Draco.

"I've only just met you and your brother, Miss Granger." Cressida released Draco's wrist. "One shouldn't get carried away. It's silly."

"It's hard not to be silly sometimes."

Cressida's wide brown eyes shone wet in the candlelight. "It is, isn't it." She swiped the back of her hand over her cheeks. "I'll leave you, then."

She picked up her skirts in one hand and bustled to the door.

"Please remember," she said as she gripped the door handle, "pulse, breathing, blood pressure—"

"I understand, Cressida," said Hermione. "I promise you that I understand."

With a click of the latch, Hermione and Draco were alone.

His breathing was fast and shallow.

Before she could forget, she pulled Mr. Martin's potion from a pocket in her dressing gown and uncapped it. Very gently, she tucked her finger between his teeth and pulled his jaw down. She tipped half of the potion along the inside of his cheek, and breathed a sigh of relief as he visibly swallowed.

She capped the potion and pocketed it again, then pulled out her wand and extinguished the candles around the room. The fire was dying down to its embers, and they were left bathed in the flickering glow of his vital signs overhead.

She glanced up at the door and listened. Hearing no sounds at all, she leaned forward, pushed her arm beneath his, and took his hand. It was warm and a little damp, and though she wove her fingers between his and folded them against the back of his hand, his grip remained slack.

"I do remember about the raspberries, you know." Her voice was low and deliberate. "And I do only have them at Christmas. Only _ever_ at Christmas." She squeezed his hand. "I had them at that first party, when we'd been working together for two years. I got so angry that you still wouldn't come and then I bullied you into it."

Without letting go of him, she sank to her knees on the floor beside the bed.

"You tease me about them every year, but I order them anyway. I always have too many and I always, always will."

The first pair of tears ran down her cheeks and spattered on the floor at her knees.

Carefully, she rose, and even more carefully, slid into the narrow strip of space between his body and the edge of the bed, and lay down beside him.

"You're a cad," she whispered. The tears forged new paths from the corners of her eyes and dripped against the surface of the bed linens. She brought her free hand to his mouth. With the lightest touch of the very tip of her finger, she traced the shape of his upper lip.

"And you taste of mint."

She brushed the pads of her first two fingers over the full curve of his lower lip, then let them trail over his cheek and jaw to the space just behind his ear.

"You're going to wake up tomorrow," she said. "I'm telling you, and you have to listen to me this time." Her voice was nearly swallowed up by the soft pop and whine of a coal in the fireplace. She lifted their entwined hands to her mouth and rested her lips against the back of his hand.

"You're the worst." Her breath moved over his skin. "You must know that you are." She stroked his earlobe, once, with a vanishing touch of her thumb.

"I don't care where it is," she whispered. "It could be England, or France, or Argentina." Her voice was thick and stilted. "And I don't care whether you can walk, or talk, or tie your own cravat. But you have to be in the world. I couldn't possibly stand it if you weren't."

She pressed her lips against his hand, and biting back a sob that rose up from the bruising pain settled deep beneath her ribs, she tucked her knees up to her belly like a child.

The damp circle on the linens below her cheek spread, and the lights above them brightened and dimmed and brightened again.

She laid her hand over his heart, and felt it drumming in his chest while she watched its echo moving in the dark.

The official Ministry Christmas party had ended at ten o' clock, and by twenty past they were parked on worn wooden stools at a laborers' bar half in and half out of Diagon Alley. An anemic strand of Christmas lights was tacked up unevenly over the long shelves of liquor bottles. It was the type that blinked, and it lit the near-white canvas of Draco's hair pink, and then blue, and then yellow, before cycling to green and starting over.

"Aren't you hot, Malfoy?" Hermione shouted.

She tucked a finger beneath the rolled edge of her turtleneck collar, pulled it away from herself, and used her other hand to fan the air of the crowded bar down the front of her dress.

"No," he said, raising his voice over the increasingly lubricated conversations around them. Somewhere behind him, a man with a clear, resonant tenor began to sing a randy version of "God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen." "But there are probably two hundred people in this bar and you're wearing—" He glanced down. "Never mind what you're wearing. Stop trying to change the subject."

Hermione was jolted forward as a man sporting a Santa hat and holding a pair of heady pints threaded his way through the crowd and knocked into her shoulder. She caught herself with a hand on Draco's thigh, then righted herself.

"I'm not changing the subject. I'm _hot_," she said. She marveled at how loud her voice had become. "It's a sweater dress. It's a sweater that's long enough to be a dress."

"I can see that, Granger." Draco laughed as he brought his glass of Ogden's to his mouth. "It looks cozy."

"Gods, you're the worst." She propped her elbow against the bar, leaned her head heavily against her hand, and considered him. "The _absolute_ worst. I hope you're aware of that." He smirked at her, and her eyes opened wide. "Oh! There you are, you smirk. I'm going to cover you up." She lifted her free hand and squinted so that from her perspective it blocked the lower half of his face. From the way his eyes crinkled at the corners, it seemed to make him smile in full. She huffed a stray coil of hair out of her eyes, sat back up, and began to circle a finger around the rim of her cocktail glass where a handful of raspberries bobbed at the surface of a pink drink. She picked up the glass and drank deeply, then set it back down half on and half off the paper coaster next to her. As it began to tip, Draco put his hand over hers and helped guide the glass back until it was securely situated. "I don't know why you think the ratios are off," she continued, sucking a drop of liquid from the side of her thumb then letting her forearm rest on the bar. "The preliminaries look perfect, and—"

"The preliminaries are preliminaries," he said, exasperated. "And plants are entirely different on a cellular level to—"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"See! That's exactly what I was talking about a minute ago." He pointed at her. "I thought we'd agreed to no eye rolling about work." He dropped his hand next to hers. "Who's the worst now? It's you." He grasped the tip of her little finger and held it for a moment, then pulled his hand away and took another sip of his drink.

"I could time travel to Byzantium tomorrow with that potion in hand and come back not a day older." She swept her arm in front of herself for emphasis. "Look." She turned to the man sitting on the other side of her and patted his arm. "Stevens? Yes, hello, do you mind?" She indicated the white paper serviette sitting in front of him. "Thank you," she said as he handed it to her. "Do you have a quill, Malfoy?"

Draco produced a slim silver self-inking quill from the interior pocket of his suit jacket and handed it to her.

"Thanks. I don't have one on me," she said, looking down and briefly searching at her hips for a nonexistent place to stash a quill.

"I'm shocked you have room for yourself in that dress let alone a writing implement."

"It's well and truly just me in here, believe me," she said, and his impeccable eyebrows reached for the ceiling. "You made a very compelling argument about the necessity of the kelp extract," she said, marking down a series of wobbly symbols on the serviette, "and the sustainably harvested—"

"Is it sustainably harvested?" he asked.

"Yes, it's _sustainably harvested _uni-oshi—"

"Ushi-oni."

"—_ushi-oni_ venom." In spite of herself, she laughed. "Stop it." He nodded obediently while she scrawled another series of marks. "We've brewed it and we're so near to being done reengineering the Time Turners that we can begin to really test it. The potion looks _perfect._" She shoved the serviette in front of him and tossed the quill down beside it. "Show me the flaw in the essential formula. Please." She picked up her glass and drained it in three swallows, then chewed triumphantly on a raspberry.

"I'm not arguing that it isn't possible that it's the right answer to the problem of aging and time travel, Granger," said Draco, picking up the serviette and looking it over. The bar had grown even louder, and it sounded as though someone had brought over the leftover cupcakes from the official Ministry Christmas party. He listened to the ambient conversation for a moment, then raised his voice and turned more fully towards her. There was very little space to maneuver, and as she pulled closer to hear him, the tips of her knees slid between his parted legs. He brought the side of his fist to his lips and cleared his throat before beginning again. "I fully recognize that this"—he waved the serviette—"is an extraordinarily promising, highly creative approach." Hermione pursed her lips at him in self-satisfaction. He looked amused as he set down the serviette and grasped his drink. "I'm just saying that I would _not_ join you for brunch in Byzantium tomorrow with a vial of that potion in my pocket. Even if you asked me very nicely. Because the ratios are off."

Hermione tipped towards him. "You," she said, slapping her palm against the center of his chest, "are wrong. And the day that I prove it to you will be one that I savor like—"

"Like three stiff French martinis in the space of forty five minutes?"

"—like a _fine wine._" Her hand slid limply down the front of his shirt and came to rest on his thigh. "It's been _sixty_ minutes at least." She smacked his leg for emphasis. "And the martinis are delicious. I'm telling you that they're raspberry _and_ pineapple but you refuse to listen_._ Anyway, you're supposed to be the cavalier one. Who are you? Where is my lab partner?"

"Judging by how close you are to tumbling off that stool," he said, nudging her to sit more securely with a hand at her waist, "at least two drinks behind you."

She was muzzy with vodka and Chambord, and it took her a moment to fully absorb that she'd been looking him directly in the eyes for quite some time. Pale slate blue. Grey, if you weren't close enough. But she was.

"I'm not drunk." She wrinkled her nose at him petulantly.

"Of course not. That would be impossible." He reached up and grabbed the tip of an errant curl at her temple, pulled it down and released it. "Hermione Granger doesn't get drunk." The smile that dragged at the corner of his mouth was a small, disconcertingly fragile thing that faded, then disappeared. "She's perfect."

She felt that she ought to laugh, but there was no levity in her voice when she spoke. "I'm not perfect."

He took in a slow breath and released it, as though he were very tired. "You're not?"

She shook her head. "No."

"Are you telling me, _Granger_—"

"That's me."

"—yes, that's very much you. Are you telling me that you're capable of making mistakes?"

It had grown even hotter in the bar. Hermione tugged at the front of her dress again. "You're laughing at me," she said.

"Not this time."

The part of her mind that remained dry above the flood of alcohol recognized that there was a socially acceptable limit to eye contact, and that they'd surpassed it.

Not silver, in a dim and dingy bar. Grey blue like the surf on a cloud-sheltered day.

The room felt airless.

And she wanted...she _wanted_…

In that moment, she was acutely aware of something she carried around inside of herself that was neither an ache nor an itch but somehow both, deep and unreachable and, confusingly, _sad_ if she allowed herself to dwell on it. It was an ailment very much of the body, and the unfailing cure was a rapid retreat to the safety of her head.

The muscle of his thigh contracted under her fingers.

"I try," she said, drawing her hand back into her own lap. "I try very hard to not make mistakes."

His gaze wandered over her face. "Well. I certainly wouldn't want to be one."

"One what?"

"One of your mistakes."

A voice vaulted the fence they'd built around themselves. "Y'alright, Mione?"

Draco drew back his knees, picked up his drink, and turned to face the bar.

Ron was squeezing between the backs of two Ministry employees, lifting his half-full pint glass up over their heads, and winding his way towards them. When he arrived, he leaned a hip against the wooden counter behind Hermione, wrapped his arm across the front of her shoulders, and kissed the top of her head. "Happy Christmas, Ferret."

Draco's eyes were trained on the rows of bottles behind the bar, but he glanced up at Ron and raised his glass. "Happy Christmas, Weasel."

Hermione folded her fingers over Ron's forearm. "Are we still doing _The Wind in the Willows_?"

They ignored her.

"Did you come here with Alisha? From payroll?" Ron asked Draco.

Draco nodded curtly.

"Seamus is showing her some pointers over at the billiards table. It's a rather up close and personal tutorial. Just a heads up." Ron rubbed at Hermione's shoulder with his thumb.

Draco spared a brief glance across the room. "I'll make sure she's not too drunk to go home with him."

"Did the two of you sort out your differences about the—" Ron gestured at the serviette sitting on the bar.

"They're not differences, exactly," said Hermione. "That great horrible smirk over there is just being an intractable pessimist. And intractably wrong."

Draco scoffed and signaled to the bartender for another whiskey.

"How many have you had, Mione?" asked Ron. He laughed and squeezed her shoulder. "Has she been bullying you like this all evening, Malfoy?"

Draco sighed. "She certainly shouldn't Apparate."

"Alright, then." Ron polished off his pint and leaned down to press his lips against the top of Hermione's head again. "I'm ready to go home. Shall I toss you over my shoulder? Or would you like to stay here and take Malfoy down a few more pegs? Could you get her home for us, Malfoy?"

Draco looked briefly at Hermione and nodded. "Whatever she wants."

She turned her face away from him. Her cheeks felt hot. "I'm fine. I'll come home."

She gathered up her beaded bag and slipped her feet back into the heels she'd kicked off underneath her bar stool.

She fought back an impulse to lay a hand against Draco's arm. "Happy Christmas. I'll see you in the New Year, alright?"

The bartender placed his drink in front of him and swept away his empty glass. He looked down and rotated it on its coaster, then gave Hermione and Ron a tight, congenial smile.

"Happy Christmas, Granger. Weasley." He drummed his fingers against the side of his glass. "See you back at the lab."

Ron was tall, strong, and full of an earned confidence after four years as an Auror, and he pushed through the press of bodies ahead of him with ease, pulling Hermione behind him. As she gripped his hand and followed, she looked back over her shoulder.

Draco sat at the bar, his hair lit green, and then pink, and then blue. He took a drink of his whiskey, and watched her go.


	7. Chapter 7: The Letter

"Would you like the yellow or the green, Miss Granger?"

Margaret McClure held up a pair of dresses, one in sage trimmed with coral pink ribbon and the other daffodil yellow with white embroidery at the edges.

Hermione wasn't in the least bothered either way. "Whichever you think is best, Miss Margaret."

"I was terribly sorry to hear about your brother." Margaret folded the yellow dress back down into the trunk she'd arrived with that morning. "I was shocked as anything to hear of it when Mr. Grix told me. Why these young men must go roaring about on their brooms, I'll never understand."

Hermione lifted her arms as Margaret brought the green dress down over her head. "Nor shall I."

"Will you sit with him today?" Margaret asked.

"He has a far better nurse in Miss Cressida." Hermione turned at a press of Margaret's fingers and lifted her hair out of the path of the buttons at the back of the dress. "I'm only in the way when I'm there."

The night before, Hermione had been lulled by the steady fade and glow of the monitoring spells over Draco's head, and had fallen asleep beside him in his bed. She slept fitfully, and woke in full at the first hint of light leaking around the edges of the heavy curtains. After slipping out of his bed, she tucked herself up on the chaise and dozed before Cressida, fully dressed, knocked with a light hand and peered around the door.

Healer Bartholomew arrived by Floo from London shortly after, and Hermione watched as the two of them removed the bandages from Draco's head to survey the progress of his visible wounds.

"Oh, Merlin," Hermione muttered.

Cressida looked up from where her fingers made a methodical search of the paling purple-red lines of cuts and tears mending themselves across the crown of his head. "What is it, Miss Granger?"

Hermione gestured at the scant quarter inch of white-blond fuzz covering Draco's scalp. "You shaved him."

"Yes," said Cressida. "We needed to access his wounds."

"Of course." Hermione frowned. "It's only that he's rather proud of his hair."

"Naturally." Cressida resumed inspecting Draco's injuries.

She'd placed a small earthenware pot on a tray beside the bed. It was filled with an oily salve that smelled resinous and acidic, like pine and lemon peel. She dipped the pads of her fingers into it, and began applying it to the lines of his scars. "These superficial wounds are healing quickly. I applied a growth serum to his hair last night before we did our last round of bandages, and I'll do so again today. It will all be back within days." She looked at Hermione. "He'll hardly notice it was missing when he wakes."

_If he wakes_, Hermione's anxiety offered.

"I assure you your brother will be in full plumage soon enough, Miss Granger." Healer Bartholomew looked up from the parchment he was writing on. He gestured with his quill at the monitoring spells over Draco's head. "As I told Miss Cressida, I find his signs highly encouraging. She has agreed to assist me with a novel spell this afternoon that may provide us with additional information."

Dipping her fingertips into the pot of salve again, Cressida's lips lifted at the corners in well-earned pride.

Moments later, an Elf entered to alert Hermione to Margaret's arrival.

"No cosmetic spells today please, Miss Margaret," Hermione had asked, and yet she made her way downstairs looking plump and pulchritudinous as a wood nymph, with coral cheeks to match the ribbon trimming her dress, and a halo of shining dark brown curls. Her visible flesh had the pale and rosy complexion of a prize piglet scrubbed up for the county fair.

Disinterested in the Longbottom girls' ongoing, frivolous chatter about the approaching ball, she left the sitting room and moved through the rest of the morning in self-chosen solitude.

For a full hour, she curled up in a chair in the library, then took a slow walk around the grounds. In the ornamental gardens, she pressed her nose into luscious sprays of buttery yellow roses and breathed in their scent, heavy with violet and lemon. She spied a grove of fruit trees situated on the other side of the kitchen vegetable beds, and decided she'd strike out after it following the afternoon meal.

For a while she sat again, every bit as needlessly as before, in the corner of Draco's sickroom. Healer Bartholomew had left, and Cressida and Healer Frederickson stood with their heads together over Draco, who remained prone and silent, discussing his graphs and the opinions of Bartholomew and his colleagues at St. Mungo's. Hermione's attention flitted without ever landing between their talk and a stack of books she'd liberated from the library.

At last, in desperate need of motion and industry, she walked to Twiggybroke Cottage alone.

Midsummer was flush with heat and life. Passing from the sun-beaten lawns of Bugg-Buntley Hall and into the shaded woods below, the air grew cooler. The sun filtered through the canopy of the trees and illuminated the leaves from above, causing them to glow in variegated greens and yellows. As she approached the glen, a breeze sifted through the bright branches and infused the air with the smell of a lilac grown to monstrous proportions at the edge of the wood.

She found Grix and Mr. Martin sitting in a patch of sunlight beside the brook, chattering away.

"He's a _crow. _I've seen him," said Martin, adjusting the arm of his spectacles over his ear. "Hopping about in the birch, bold as anything. Naked thievery, I tell you."

"You do tell me. You _keep _telling me." Grix leaned against the back of a wooden bench, its green paint chipped through to past layers of cornflower blue and mustard yellow, and twirled an enormous oak leaf between his fingers. "If you'd eat your strawberries your own self it wouldn't happen."

Martin's face broke into a smile upon seeing Hermione coming along the path.

"Miss Granger!" he called out. "Hermione! My gel!"

Hermione approached them, clutching the yellow leather-bound copy of _Entheogenic Potionery and the Alchemy of the Mind _she'd brought to the Hall the day before. "Good morning, Cousin. Mr. Grix."

"How is poor Cousin Malfo?" Martin patted his own head. "Still broken?"

"Draco, Martin," said Grix, twirling his leaf. "What a scholar you are. Here, put on your Oxford cap." He stretched out his arm and set the leaf on top of Martin's head.

"He's still asleep," said Hermione. "This morning, Healer Bartholomew suggested he seemed more active, very likely dreaming, which he took to be an encouraging sign."

Martin fixed Grix with an intent look and pointed at Hermione. "Give her the potion."

"Keep your hat on." Grix hopped from the bench and beckoned Hermione with a wave of his arm. "Come on. Martin's got another round of potions he's cooked up. One of them's purple and smells of cherries. I suspect he's added sugar."

Inside the cottage, Grix lined up a row of vials on the table: three more filled with the peach-colored potion Hermione administered to Draco the night before and again that morning, and another four with a thick, sticky-looking potion in a garish, greasy violet.

Martin guided his chair up to the edge of the table, and drew a diminutive corked glass globe holding no more than a few drops of something inky blue from the folds of his blankets.

"Five drops." Martin placed the twilight potion next to the others. "Under the tongue once he wakes."

"That better not be the one that made you parrot the entirety of Thomas Aquinas' sermons at Lent in 1273," grumbled Grix. "It certainly looks like it."

Martin closed his great round eyes in noble equanimity. "For the _memory_."

"The memory of Thomas Aquinas, I don't wonder." Grix looked back over his shoulder as he crossed into the kitchen. "This is for you, Hermione."

He fetched a woven basket from the counter beside the sink. It was lined with a cloth serviette, which Grix folded over the top of a small glass bottle with a cork, something square wrapped in paper, and a selection of fruit.

"Blackberry cordial and a nice bit of cake." He set it on the table, then wrapped the vials of potions in a cloth and tucked them inside.

Hermione held out the book with the yellow leather cover. "I wondered whether it would be alright for me to make a copy of this for Roland Weasley."

Martin lifted his chin and regarded the book. He was silent for a moment, then erupted.

"Visions!"

"Yes," Hermione agreed. "Mr. Weasley asked about it, and I told him I'd inquire about the possibility of making him a copy of his own."

Martin nodded and smiled. "Do what you like."

Grix watched with circumspection as Hermione laid the book on the kitchen table. She drew out her wand, said "_Apograph Adcurius,_" in resonant tones, and performed a highly precise series of gestures with her wand and her free hand over the book.

It took on the quality of a three dimensional picture seen without polarized glasses, appearing to split into two overlapping and barely offset copies, one sitting above and slightly beside itself, before resolving into a squared stack of two identical volumes.

Martin clapped his hands in appreciation. "Clever cousin!"

Grix grabbed the top copy and flipped through it to several targeted pages, which he scrutinized with sharp eyes before handing the book back to Hermione. "That's quite well done. You've a talent for it."

"Thank you." Hermione slipped both copies of the text into the basket with the potion vials.

She pressed her hand over her bosom where the Time Turner lurked in its leather bag. "Do you know," she began tenuously, "of a metallurgist at Oxford, by any chance? Someone who does magically infused casting, for instance?"

Without warning, and to Hermione's enormous shock, Martin went red in the face and his eyes widened to alarming dimensions.

"Fukkink!"

Hermione stared. "Pardon?"

"Fukkink." Martin turned an elegant shade of Bordeaux and appeared to vibrate at the ears. "_Jan." _

Hermione watched him in awe. "Jan?"

"That's gone fifty years ago now. Simmer yourself down." Grix patted Martin's arm and looked at Hermione with a roll of his eyes. "Jan Fukkink is one of the dons at Oxford. Of Dutch extraction, I understand. Works in magicked pen knives and monocles that show you what's going on in your own drawing room while you're away at the theatre and so forth. A bit ungenerous with his evaluations of other people's work."

"Parvenu!" shouted Martin. "Young brute. He called me a _liar. _"

"He never called you a liar. He said you'd _exaggerated._" Grix fiddled with the folds of the fabric over Hermione's treat basket.

"I don't exaggerate," said Martin, frowning and crossing his arms over his chest.

"Of course not. But Fukkink has half your intellect and twice the clout. It's the way it goes."

"Fancy filigreed footwear," groused Martin. "Fop."

Grix shuffled to the cooker, took a dark brown, fibrous-looking muffin from a pan on the countertop and handed it to Martin. "Forget the boots, old man. That was one battle you were never meant to win."

Martin's left eye twitched as he bit into the muffin and ground away mercilessly with his jaws.

Grix paused in covering the muffin pan with a cloth. "What do you need a metallurgist for, anyway? Pocket watch sprung a cog on you? I could take a look. Elf magic goes rather a long way."

Hermione flushed in shame. Not for the first time, she felt the entirety of her and Draco's story pressing at the backs of her teeth, and had to swallow it down before she spoke. "It's nothing. I was only curious, really. A passing interest in . . . sextants."

Grix's eyebrows made an attempt to meet in the middle. "I see."

"Well!" Hermione picked up her basket and juggled it carefully so that her corked bottle and Draco's potions remained secure. "I ought to go back to the Hall. When should I administer the new potions?"

Martin swallowed his muffin. "Knock the Healers back and pour it in! Retrograde incompetents."

"I told you that you'd be in a right foul mood if you skipped your mid-morning bite," said Grix to Martin. "You can't let that crow get at your strawberries anymore. Eat your muffin." To Hermione, he said, "Sneak the purple one in at lunch time. Half the bottle down the side of the cheek if he's not awake. And the peach one just after. Martin says three doses per day of that one is ideal. There are two doses per bottle. Give the memory potion only on waking. You'll need to make sure he's reasonably coherent. Or at least as coherent as he usually is. I can't promise he won't come over liturgical on you."

"He shan't!" Martin patted his own knees, and his eyes sparkled. "It's for if he can't remember his A from his Zed."

"You can't remember your A from your Zed half the time," said Grix. "I ought to give that one with your oats."

Martin closed his eyes and leaned back. "Tastes of cabbage."

Hermione thanked them both and parted ways with them at the gate, starting the short walk back to the Hall. The pair of them tootled down to the bench by the brook with a basket full of muffins and a bottle of spring water.

As she approached the Hall, she suddenly couldn't bear the thought of spending another period sitting like an obstructive ornament in the sickroom.

Instead of entering the house through the back, she recalled the distant orchard, and skirted the edge of the gardens towards the west end of the grounds. There, the white gravel of the formal walk gave way to the tidy and amiable paths of the kitchen garden.

The air was scented with piquant balm, sweet, sun-warmed soil, and the fragrance of the mint and thyme tumbling riotous over the flags of the walk. Honeybees rustled inside the fluted ocher petals of cucumber flowers, their legs weighted with pollen. Between a bed of strawberries and a patch of beetroot, a dense spray of honeysuckle clung to a wooden arch, and a hummingbird dipped and rose possessively around the blooms. As Hermione passed a trellis of peas, she twisted a pod from its stem, broke it open, and burst the sweet round seeds between her teeth while she wandered out from the western edge of the garden.

She meandered past the lavender border, then followed a narrow track through a knee-high field of daisies and knapweed, buttercups and lupine, clusters of pink and white hollyhocks, and bright poppies whose seeds must have been scattered there by hand.

Down an incline, past a pair of unkempt dwarf trees bowing under the weight of bunches of glossy burgundy cherries, she discovered a bowl of earth measuring about half of an acre. Rows of blueberry bushes spread out ahead of her, their branches loaded with ripe fruit.

Hermione's boots squelched in the heavy earth, wet and bare except for uneven patches of straggling grass at the bases of the bushes. She set her basket down and inched her way along the first row, plucking handfuls of berries and listening to the heated debate of the blackbirds in the neighboring orchard.

The Time Turner pressed against her sternum.

She'd decided the previous night, in the dark beside Draco's insensate form, that she would go into Oxford or London alone and seek out a metallurgist. She'd get help to repair the Time Turner, and then . . .

After that she wasn't sure.

Hermione had no idea whether time travel of any kind was safe with an injury as severe as Draco's, but her impulse was to bring them both back, as quickly as possible, where perhaps he could be better helped to recover.

But the question of the snuff box remained.

Lost in thought, she startled at the sound of a cleared throat.

"Good morning." At the top of the row, Roland Weasley emerged from the wildflower meadow. "Or has it gone afternoon already?"

"Still morning, I believe." She looked down at her hand, cupping two dozen blueberries the size of the corpulent bumblebees grappling with the lupine in the meadows just beyond. "You've come for a visit?"

"I've come to check on the patient." He regarded her. "And his sister. Would you like to be alone?"

She shook her head. "No."

Since Draco's accident she felt that no matter how many other people were near, and no matter how sincere their attention to her, her solitude was consummate and insurmountable.

But where the Longbottom girls and their enthusiasm for silk slippers and Scotch Reels made her feel apart, Roland's proximity was comforting.

Without speaking, he plucked his way down the row towards her, dropping half the berries into his cupped palm and half into his mouth, until he stood beside her.

For a long while, they said nothing, only twisted dusky berries from their stems, dropped them in their hands, and ate while the sun climbed in the cloudless sky.

"You can do this much faster with a wand," he said at last. "But I suspect speed isn't your objective."

"No, it isn't. Although—" she examined an especially stout specimen "—I've had a thought."

"I'm anxious to hear it."

"I'm going to make a pie.

"A pie?"

"Yes. I make remarkable pie. Life-altering, I've been told."

"Indeed? Then I suppose I ought to pick faster if I want to have my life altered by Miss Granger."

Roland brought out his wand.

"Only by hand." Hermione gestured towards him with her palm out. "That part's important."

But she needn't have cautioned him. Before she finished speaking, he'd conjured a shallow, finely woven basket and hung it over his elbow.

"I'll carry."

He worked beside her silently again, and before long the bottom of the basket was covered from view.

"Is that your pie?" Harry sniffed the air.

Hermione didn't look up from her parchment. "No, I believe that's roast chicken. Smith over in Death has a very domestic girlfriend that packs him an elaborate hot lunch every day."

"Good. It would have been nasty if that'd been the pie." Harry leaned towards the woven cylindrical basket with a wooden lid and long leather handles sitting on Hermione's desk, and sniffed again. "Did you pick the berries yourself?"

He was younger then, lean and less imposing in his black Auror uniform than he would be only a few years later, and still only flirting with the idea of wearing a beard.

"I did," Hermione answered. "Don't touch it."

"I'm not touching it."

"You're thinking about touching it." She slid the top sheet of parchment from the stack in front of her, blew on the ink, and set it aside. "Don't."

"Don't think about it? How will you know if I do?"

"_I'll know._"

"What's terrifying is that even without Legilimency, that's probably true." Harry reached for the lid of the basket.

Hermione slapped his hand with the end of her quill.

"Leave it. Must you sit on my desk every time you come down here?"

"Sitting on Ron's is getting old." Harry hopped down off the corner. "What time is the move on Saturday? I assume you've got it all plotted out to the last soup spoon, but Gin said we're supposed to help out."

"I'm moving the heavy things—"

"We're wizards, Hermione."

"I'm moving the things that would be heavy without the aid of magic at ten o'clock."

"'_I'm' _moving? Not _we're _moving?"

"Yes, _I'm _moving. It's my flat. I've signed the tenancy agreement and bought all the furniture. Ron's only staying in it until he finds a suitable place of his own." She tapped the folded property advertisements from the Daily Prophet sitting on top of her pile of actionable papers. "The selection is quite thin at present in his budget range, but he mentioned something about nearly walking in on his sister _in flagrante delicto _in the kitchen at Grimmauld Place. I've taken pity on him."

Harry's cheeks colored. "Does Ron know he's not really moving in?"

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Obviously."

"Gods, do you do that to this one?" Harry jerked his head towards the empty desk on the other side of the room. "I'll bet you do. Do it when he gets here, I want to see."

"I believe Molly's bringing lunch round just after," Hermione said, ignoring him. "Around noon."

"You're right. That definitely doesn't sound like Ron's moving in for real." Harry walked with his hands jammed in his pockets to the empty work table in the center of the room and leaned back against it. "How's it going with Malfoy, anyway? Are you regretting that hiring decision yet?"

Hermione finished filling out the third page of a budget request form and moved on to the fourth. "It wasn't my hiring decision."

"You've only just turned twenty and they gave you an entire department."

"A comprehensively ravaged department with no remaining records and no functional equipment, that nobody else wanted. But we have been generously given—" she counted off on her fingers "—parchment we have to ration out like it's edged in real gold leaf, chipped desks infused with the troubling smell of turpentine, and chairs that squeak no matter how many spells we've applied to prevent them from doing so. The power is intoxicating."

"They did let you hire whoever you wanted." He scratched at the day-old stubble under his chin. "Malfoy's the one you actively chose."

"His N.E.W.T.'s were unmatched, besides my own. And you weren't at school with us when we went back last year."

Harry pushed off the table and inched towards Hermione's desk again. "Gin said he was like a ghost. She hardly knew he was there."

"He was. It was—" Hermione bit back the word _sad. _"The point is, I believe his contrition is entirely genuine. He's changed. We all have."

"I should imagine so. Kingsley said you really staked your reputation advocating for him. Vouched for him not using Time Turners for genocidal purposes and so forth."

"There's a bit of a gap between being brought up with odious attitudes about blood purity and actively wanting to murder people, if the number of Slytherins who testified against their own parents postwar gives us anything to go on. Anyway, we don't have Time Turners."

Harry picked up an assembly drawing off the end of the work table, held it up and pointed at the neat block print in the upper right corner. It read, "Time Turner".

"We don't have them _yet_," said Hermione.

Just then the lock on the door to the laboratory beeped, and Draco walked in. He wore his daily uniform of a neat black suit with a button up shirt and dark tie, his hair tidily combed, but longer at the top and looser than he wore it at school. He carried a satchel over his shoulder and a coat draped over his arm.

He paused in the doorway and looked between Hermione and Harry as though he were deliberating whether to pull his wand out of his pocket to prepare for a duel, or turn around and go running back towards the lifts.

"Good morning, Malfoy," said Hermione.

Draco's shoulders relaxed marginally. He crossed the room and tossed his coat over the back of his chair and his satchel down on his desk. "Good morning, Granger." His eyes remained trained on Harry. "Potter."

"Malfoy."

Draco sniffed the air. "Has Gemma sent Smith with a roast chicken again?"

"I believe so," said Hermione.

Harry watched Draco settle into his work day, then turned his attention back to the pie carrier. He tucked a fingertip under the lid and began to lift it.

"I said, don't touch my pie." Hermione swiveled her chair towards him.

Harry leaned in close to the carrier and drew in a deep breath. "Smelling is not touching."

"Get out of my lab."

"_Your _lab?" said Harry. "Do you hear that, Malfoy?"

Draco didn't respond. He sat down in his chair, pulled open a drawer, drew out a roll of blueprint and spread it open on his desk.

Harry shrugged. "You coming, Malfoy?"

"Coming to what?" Draco didn't bother looking up.

"The pie contest."

At that, Draco lifted his head from his parchment. He stared back at Harry from his seat as though he'd started shouting at him in Welsh.

"The what?"

"The pie contest," said Hermione.

"The pie contest." Draco narrowed his eyes.

"Yes," said Harry. "It's a contest to see who can say 'pie contest' the most."

Hermione leveled a glare at him. "Why are you still in my lab? Has crime ebbed so substantially that your office no longer requires your services?"

"Sadly, no. I'll see you at—" Harry looked between Draco and Hermione and waited. "The pie contest."

"Out. Immediately, or Ron stays and your ability to commit sexual misdeeds on food preparation and eating surfaces in your own home narrows substantially."

At that, Harry hustled to the door.

Once it had clicked shut behind him, the room was silent except for the scratching of Draco and Hermione's quills.

After a quarter of an hour, Draco's chair squealed as he leaned back in it.

He cleared his throat.

"Yes, Malfoy?" Hermione kept her eyes on her writing.

"A pie contest."

"I believe we've firmly established that's what it is."

"And you want me to come to it."

Hermione's hand stopped moving. She set down her quill, and turned around to look at him.

He was pale as always, and deathly serious, but something in his expression made her feel a bit soft and runny inside, like pie filling.

"I would like you to, yes." She folded her hands in her lap, and hoped she looked as sincere as she felt. "Very much."

He looked at the squat basket on Hermione's desk. "What is that?"

"It's a pie carrier."

"A pie carrier," Draco repeated. "And there's a pie in it."

"Yes."

"That you've made."

"I have made it, yes," said Hermione.

"What sort?"

"Blueberry. I pick them in August and put them under a freezing charm."

He crossed his arms over his chest and furrowed his brow.

"And this pie"—he pointed at the basket—"will be competing against other pies."

"It will. It's a fundraiser, first and foremost, but we've also put it together as a kind of interdepartmental team building, boost-the-spirits event."

Draco's eyes grew tense with revulsion and he leaned back farther in his chair.

"It's all in good fun," said Hermione. "Rather like . . . baking Quidditch."

The corner of Draco's mouth twitched.

In the ten months Hermione spent at Hogwarts with Draco making up for a ruined seventh year, she had never once seen him smile. And in their three months working together in the Department of Mysteries, he'd smiled once, perhaps twice, and only ever when he thought she wasn't looking.

"Baking Quidditch," he repeated.

"I should think it's rather more interesting than actual Quidditch, but yes. I know you like sweets, and—"

"I don't like sweets." He pushed himself away from her, his chair scraping against the marble floor.

Hermione glanced at the drawer in his desk he kept stocked with foil-wrapped chocolates.

"Alright. But it's only a Galleon, and you get a sample of every pie entered. I'm sure there will be chocolate cream—"

"Every pie?" His chair protested as he shifted his weight forward again.

"That's right."

"And I judge them?"

"You vote, yes."

He steepled his fingers under his chin and considered. "Do I have to vote for yours?"

"Only if you want to. I'd want you to be honest, of course."

"But we're—" he gestured between the two of them "—coworkers. I feel like that would obligate me to you. Influence my decision."

"We're all adults here. Just be honest. You like the pie you like. No one's going to hold it against you—certainly not me."

He looked over at her, direct and earnest and wary all at once.

"It's only pie."

"Yes, Malfoy. It's only pie."

"Do you often make pie when you're in distress, Miss Granger?"

Hermione considered. "I suppose that I do."

"And you roll . . ."

"Not like that!" Hermione pulled her hands back as she felt the impulse to grab the rolling pin out of Roland Weasley's hands. "That's too hard. The butter's supposed to be suspended in the dough. You're crushing away at it like you're running short on time in a Potions final."

"Why is it so _cold?_" Roland laughed as he flattened the dough with the pin. "I can't feel anything in my fingertips anymore."

"Of course you can, don't be ridiculous. It's the mildest cooling charm imaginable. Here, like this."

Hermione pushed her way between Roland and the work table in the kitchen at Bugg-Buntley Hall, and took up the rolling pin. "Firm and decisive, but you shouldn't be _crushing_."

Roland, a full head and then some taller than Hermione, placed his hand beside the pool of flour dusting the table, and leaned over her shoulder. "Not crushing," he said, sounding not entirely serious. "I see. Firm. Decisive."

Hermione suppressed a laugh. "You look absurd in that apron, you know."

Roland glanced down at himself. When they'd entered the kitchen with a basket weighted down with berries, he'd removed his jacket, rolled up his shirt sleeves, and tied a knee-length apron in striped linen over his trousers and waistcoat.

"This is one of my better suits, and we're rolling here, _quite _firmly, _quite _decisively . . ."

Hermione picked up a pinch of flour in her fingertips and tossed it behind her. It landed in a spray of white over the midnight blue shoulder of his waistcoat.

She bit at her lip to stop the laughter threatening to break loose.

"You did not, Miss Granger."

"I'm afraid that I did."

"I see. You've given me no choice."

"No choice in what—"

Hermione pinched her eyes shut as Roland, fingertip dipped in flour, swiped over the tip of her nose and then her chin. Firmly. Decisively.

"You _absolute_—" she began.

Roland leaned forward and spoke in a low voice. "I'm afraid if you engage in this conflict any further, your butter is going to warm up, Miss Granger."

Hermione wiped at her nose and chin with her wrist, blinking at a curl of hair falling into her eye.

Roland's long, clever, flour-white fingers pushed it back from her forehead and tucked it over her ear.

She rolled the dough.

She swallowed.

Firmly.

Decisively.

They made a pair of pies, sticky purple-black bubbling out of their insides and onto their gleaming golden brown tops. Leaving them to cool on iron trivets on the work table, Roland retired to the drawing room to manage his correspondence while Hermione made her way upstairs again with a copy of _Entheogenic Potionery _tucked under her arm.

She was surprised to find William Avery in the hallway outside of Draco's room, speaking in a low voice to Healer Bartholomew.

"Miss Granger," William said as she approached. "I came to see how your brother is getting on. Healer Bartholomew informs me that his progress is encouraging."

"Is it?" Hermione turned to Bartholomew, her stomach churning with anticipation. "Have there been any changes?"

Bartholomew shook his head. "Not in awareness, but his vital signs have stabilized to an unexpected degree. I've put in place several experimental spells of my own invention that I believe are informative about his internal progress. I remain cautiously optimistic that we can anticipate signs of consciousness."

"I understand that Cressida's been indispensable." William tucked his hands casually in his pockets, but looked at Bartholomew with an interest he wasn't able to fully conceal.

"She has. Would you like to come in and speak to her about it yourself, Mr. Avery?"

William shook his head. "I've only stopped by to inquire. I've promised my brothers each a game of chess this afternoon, and if I don't follow through there will be an uproar."

Hermione smiled, recollecting Charles and John Avery. The idea of them playing at Wizard's Chess with the long-suffering William beggared the imagination. "How are your brothers? Fully recovered, I hope?"

"Incorrigible as always. I believe Mother's put all three of those rogues under permanent buoyancy enchantments."

"Wholly understandable."

He rolled his eyes to the side and muttered, "All four of us, more like. I ought to see if I'm still capable of putting my head under in the bath."

"I've baked a pair of pies with Mr. Weasley. When you've made your way to the drawing room, you ought to have a slice with your tea."

William lifted an eyebrow. "You've made a baker of Rolly, have you? Singular."

"I won't claim to have made him anything more than a novitiate. He does show an admirable ability to mix cinnamon and blueberries in a bowl without tipping too much over the rim."

"I'll believe it when I see it."

"I'll head down with you, Mr. Avery," said Healer Bartholomew. "I've missed my tea, and a slice of pie would be most welcome."

Bartholomew led the way down the stairs, and William sprang after him, relaxed and athletic and full of all the life and energy of youth.

In the sickroom, that same energy seemed to have drained away entirely from Draco. He was pale as the sheets he slept under.

Cressida sat at the desk in the corner of the room. When Hermione entered, she hastily folded the rectangle of parchment she was writing on and tucked the document into her pocket.

"Good afternoon, Miss Granger." She stood and smoothed her hands over her skirt. Her cheeks were painted with a deep blush. "I was only taking some notes on the patient's progress." She glanced at the door with clear anxiety.

Hermione's brow wrinkled. "Of course."

Cressida nodded.

An overlong silence stretched out between them, during which Cressida shifted from one foot to the other, and seemed to examine the wainscot. She also blinked several times, like she had something stuck in her eye. Hermione half expected her to lift her chin up, open her eyes and ask Hermione if she could see an eyelash floating across her cornea. She did not expect Cressida to burst into tears and cover her face with both hands, and yet, that's what she did.

Hermione stood stock still by the door, looking around for support from other quarters that did not seem to be forthcoming.

"Shall I fetch one of your sisters, Miss Cressida?" Hermione asked, pointing back over her shoulder. "Or your mother?"

"Oh!" Cressida cried even harder. "Not my mother, _please!_"

"Alright." Hermione considered. "Your father, perhaps?"

At that, Cressida actually fell to the floor, her shoulders heaving.

"I've done something terrible, Miss Granger." Her voice was ragged and sopping.

Hermione considered the possibilities. Realizing that puzzling over Cressida's potential transgressions with the detachment of a personal computer wasn't what was called for in the moment, she walked to her and knelt on the floor beside her.

She reached out and patted the crown of the girl's luminous straw-colored hair. "Don't cry." Hermione said it to be kind, and also because she wanted Cressida to stop.

"I'm so very sorry, Miss Granger. I don't know what came over me."

Hermione was flummoxed. "You're sorry? To _me_?"

Cressida lifted her face from her hands, and Hermione was genuinely startled.

Her dark brown eyes were downturned in sorrow, and tears streaked her cheeks, but she looked like she'd been professionally made up to conduct tragical weeping behind a Vaseline-slicked lens in a golden age Hollywood film.

She was a stunningly beautiful crier.

"Yes, to _you,_" Cressida said with a prim hiccup. "To your brother."

With that, she slapped her palms back over her eyes and recommenced the sobbing.

"I'm afraid you'll have to explain." Hermione sat back on her heels and waited.

By way of answer, Cressida reached into her skirt pocket, pulled out the rectangle of paper and thrust it at Hermione.

Hermione unfolded it, and began to read.

There was no date and no name signed to it, either in the place for the recipient or the sender, and only a handful of lines.

_You will forgive me_—_you must forgive me, or forgive whoever writes this letter, for I am not myself!_—_in my boldness in declaring unequivocally and without reserve that in these mere hours of our acquaintance, I have learned to love you. _

_The distance that parts us now is so slight that it vanishes, and becomes nothing. Know that you have only to overcome the least barrier, to bound this low and unencumbering wall, and give me but a word—a glance—and I am yours._

Hermione stared at it. She read through it twice, then a third time, flipped it over to see if it continued, then at last looked up at Cressida's lovely, tear-lined face, and understood.

"Oh, Merlin, Cressida. You can't give this to him."

Cressida sobbed noisily. "I _know._"

Hermione bit at a thumbnail and considered. "I don't mean to malign Malf—" Hermione shook her head. "_Draco, _but he's not really suited to you. Not to anyone, as far as I can tell."

Hermione hadn't thought it was possible for Cressida's eyes to look any more pathetic, but they managed it.

"No." Cressida shook her curls. "He's far too intelligent and gentlemanlike."

"Good lord!" Hermione grimaced. "He's not gentlemanlike at all. He's smarmy, and full of himself, and a _ridiculous _flirt. Everyone's in love with him. It's outrageous—oh, _damn._"

Cressida had flopped forward and mashed her dewy starlet face into Hermione's shoulder.

"Here." Hermione pushed Cressida away as gently as she could manage. "Let's destroy this—" she nodded at the letter "—and no one will ever be the wiser. Just don't write anymore declarations. I suppose you have a reputation to consider."

"I know,_ I know, _" Cressida burbled. "I don't know what's come over me."

"Don't worry. It seems to come over plenty of witches."

"It's only that he's so _particularly _brilliant, and witty, and oh, Miss Granger, your brother is the most _beautiful_—"

Hermione scowled. "I suppose, but when you take into account the dietary habits, and the general attitude—"

"—and so very, very kind."

Hermione snorted.

"When I arrived at the Averys' to help with the little boys, he was . . ." Cressida trailed off and stared into the middle distance as though haunted by a terrible vision. She turned her eyes to Hermione. "He was wet." Her voice fell to a whisper. "He flipped his hair."

"No, you have to ignore the hair."

"His shirt was soaked through. It was clinging to—" Cressida sucked in a staccato breath and was unable to finish.

Hermione nodded. "Please understand that I empathize entirely. I don't know why they insist on getting themselves wet from time to time. It's a problem I have no ready solution to."

"I know it's inexcusable—it's wicked and monstrous—and I did try to avert my eyes while Healer Frederickson and I dressed him for bed, but his body, Miss Granger. His _thighs." _Cressida's eyes opened wide. "His—"

"Stop right there, Miss Cressida. We'll speak no more about thighs."

Hermione stood and held a hand down to help Cressida up.

"I can assure you that my brother and whatever parts you've seen of him are not worth another thought." She hauled Cressida to her feet, then clutched the letter to her own plush dryad's bosom. "You must resist these feelings. Even if he wasn't an unapologetic rake, he probably has someone very specific stashed away in that absurd mind of his for whenever he's ready to stop moistening himself and flopping his hair at innocent women."

Cressida wound up for another round.

"No! Please, no more crying! I only mean that his parents—" Hermione waved her hand "—_our _parents, his and my parents are the same parents—had quite rigid expectations at one time."

"Are your and Mr. Granger's parents deceased?"

"No, they're—" Hermione thought about Australia and Azkaban. "They're out of the area at present. But their influence remains, I'm sure."

Cressida pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and dabbed at her cheeks. "Please, _please, _Miss Granger, swear to me you won't tell a soul about this."

"I won't. Here." Hermione pulled her wand from her cleavage. "Let's destroy the letter, and neither of us need ever breathe another word about it.

Just at that moment, the door to the bedroom creaked on its hinges.

"Merlin." Hermione pulled the book from under her arm and slammed the letter beneath its front cover.

"Hello, ladies!" It was Healer Frederickson. "How is our patient?"

Cressida hiccuped, and Hermione moved to block Frederickson's view of her exquisite, desolate, tear-stained face.

"Do you like pie, Healer Frederickson?" Hermione asked.

"Naturally!" he answered. "Is there some to be had?"

The theme of the rest of the afternoon was tea and slices of Hermione and Roland's pie.

"It's exquisite, Miss Granger."

The sun was making a long-winded and theatrical descent towards the brow of the soft hill to the west of Bugg-Buntley Hall. On the bench beside her in the garden, Roland's cheek caught the golden and unhurried light.

"It's the blueberries," said Hermione, scraping a slick of ink-dark filling from the dessert plate with her fork.

"Not only the blueberries."

On the lawns below, Isadora, Cassandra and Penelope played at a game of bowls in the torpid heat of the afternoon, while Sir Thomas sat in the grass beside his wife watching his cats cavort after a charmed feather.

Hermione turned away from Roland. Beside the bench, the light flared across the edges of the yellow roses.

"I believe it's your firm and decisive rolling." There was a laugh behind his words. He paused, his fork clinking against the edge of the porcelain plate. "You were entirely correct before."

Hermione turned back to him.

"In what sense?"

The sun set his hair, his brow, the upper curve of his lip aglow.

"It's life-altering."

That night, after Cressida left the sickroom for her own bed, Hermione slid again into the space beside Draco.

She administered the potions she'd been directed to give, then folded her hand into his.

"You ought to wake up so you can see what a mess you've made."

She squeezed his hand hard, and with the fire dying in the grate, she fell asleep.

By the time she woke, the front line of dawn had far advanced, and streaks of pale yellow light cut through the gaps in the curtains.

The fire had gone entirely cold in the night, and the room was commensurately frigid. Lying on the outside of the coverlet, Hermione shivered in her thin chemise. She watched Draco's chest move with his breath, slow and steady, his charts settled into a regular, monotonous hum.

For all its daytime clamor, the Hall slept silently at night. Its earliest risers were Isadora and Sir Thomas, the former quiet and the latter prone to cheerful, off-key whistling and thumping on his heels down the hall. Hermione listened, and hearing nothing, she shifted carefully off the bed, lifted the coverlet, and snugged herself back underneath. Deliberately, cautiously, she shifted closer to Draco and tucked her feet up into his side.

He was warm, even through the fabric of his nightshirt, and heated to extreme comfort under the bedclothes beside him, Hermione's eyes drifted closed again.

If she slept, she was unaware of it, but she felt as though she were returning from someplace far away when her eyes snapped open at the sensation of a balmy hand slipping over the tops of her feet.

Draco's head lolled to the side.

His eyes were open.

They remained half-lidded, bleary and holding Hermione's face in unstable focus. A hint of the purple and yellow bruising that had bloomed around his eyelids over the course of the first day remained, and the whites of his eyes were tinted with the fading pink of broken blood vessels, but his irises were clear and grey-blue.

He breathed in, and then out—a contented sigh, like he'd woken early on a drowsy Sunday—then said in an insubstantial, sandpaper voice, "Your feet are freezing."

"_Oh, gods._" She pulled her feet away from his side. "Draco."

She tried to gather her thoughts—to determine what to say, what to ask, how to ascertain his state of mind, his degree of awareness, his level of recovery. As her mind cycled through the possibilities, Draco rolled fully onto his side, draped his arm around her waist, and pulled her body flush against his.

Hermione's mouth fell open in a gasp of surprise, but before she could say anything, he bent his head down and kissed her.

"This tastes incredible."

Hermione flushed with pleasure. "Thank you."

"Truly, Granger, what's not to like about this? I don't understand."

"It's alright, Malfoy. Smith's pie won fair and square."

"Gemma's pie, you mean. I don't for a moment buy that git and his blasted roast chickens chopping rhubarb." Draco, sitting cross legged on his own desk, stabbed his fork into the floral patterned ceramic pie dish he held balanced between his knees. He drew up a monumental bite of Hermione's blueberry pie and shoved it petulantly into his mouth.

"Gerald Smith is perfectly capable of making a winning pie," said Hermione.

"I should say so. He has pie hands." Blaise Zabini, stretched out on his back on the work table in the center of the lab, raised his hands in the air and wiggled his immaculately kept fingertips.

Draco swallowed. "Pie hands."

"You know what I mean," said Blaise. "Good for rolling."

"Are we to have half of Slytherin House in the laboratory while we work?" Hermione turned in her chair and frowned while Zabini tucked his arms back behind his head. "Let me know if Pansy's on her way down so I can dress myself to her standards."

Draco pointed his fork at her. "This attitude from the woman who had Harry Potter in here sniffing her pie just this morning."

Blaise rolled over onto his side and lifted up on his arm. "Hold on, what was Potter doing to Granger's pie in here this morning?"

"He was practically buried in it." Draco polished off a third of the last wedge in the pan and forked up the lion's share of the rest. "You'd think it was going out of style."

Blaise peered at him. "He's not the only one."

"Have you tasted Granger's pie, Blaise?"

"No, I'm sorry to say I haven't had the pleasure."

"Well you ought to. I've tasted quite a few pies, and hers is something very special. I'd let you have a go, but I'm afraid I'm rather attached to it now." Draco licked the tines of the fork. "It's life-altering."

"I imagine it's mostly Weasley gets to eat Granger's pie."

Draco scowled and set down his fork.

"Speaking of the Weasel," Blaise continued. "I heard you're setting up to play house together, Granger."

Draco began to cough.

"You alright, mate?" Blaise asked.

"Fine." Draco reached for the teacup on his desk.

Hermione returned to her work and leaned forward in her chair, which made a sharp and prolonged creak in protest. "Where did you hear that, Zabini?"

Blaise sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the work table. "I have my sources. I can't say I ever imagined you and Weasley beyond one or two of those shags you have with someone just to see what it's like between the two of you."

Hermione pursed her lips. She was pushing down harder than she ought with her quill, and it snapped. "Blast it."

"You're moving in with him?" Draco asked.

Hermione took a blade from her desk drawer and reshaped the point of her quill. "He's moving into mine on a temporary basis. Anyway, what difference could it possibly make to either of you?"

The room behind her was silent for so long that Hermione turned around to look.

Draco sat with Hermione's pie dish still in his lap. His hand holding the fork had gone limp, and he was staring into the bottom of the pan as though he could divine his future in the crumbs.

Blaise looked between Draco and Hermione.

"What?" she asked.

Neither of them said anything.

"Speak up! I'm all ears. Tell me exactly what's wrong with me and Ron."

Draco's brow furrowed, and he shook his head. "Nothing. Nothing at all."

Hermione started to turn back to her desk, but he continued.

"But don't you think—" He stopped and considered his words. "It's just that your goals seem quite different—"

Hermione felt her cheeks burn. "No one asked you, Malfoy."

"You just did!"

"What do you know about my goals? We've worked together for _three months._"

_Three months where we've talked of almost nothing but our hopes and dreams for this department and, by extension, ourselves, _she thought.

Draco's face turned stony, and he set the pie pan aside, still unfinished. "You're right. I suppose I don't have the slightest idea. You have my sincerest apologies."

From his seat on the work table, Blaise cleared his throat.

"So are we talking literal pie here, or was Potter all up in Granger's—"

"Who let you in here, Blaise?" Draco cut him off, jumping down from his desk. "Because it certainly wasn't me."

"You left the door unlocked." Blaise pointed at the pie dish on Draco's desk. "Are you going to finish that? I wouldn't mind a taste."

The kiss she'd laid against the corner of Draco's mouth the day of the race had been a sisterly gesture, given for luck, much good that it did.

She tried to find something fraternal in the way Draco brushed his tongue against the swell of her lower lip before sucking on it. She'd never had a brother, but no, this wasn't the sort of sickbed greeting she imagined was standard procedure within families, and when he drew his mouth away for a fraction of a second, she laid her palms against his chest and said, "Draco."

He took that as a sign of encouragement. He not only intensified his efforts at the site of their rejoined mouths, he also introduced the idea of his hand smoothing across her belly.

She leaned as far back as she was able, breathing hard.

"What's my name?"

He disengaged at last, and raised his eyebrows. "Hello," he said with piqued interest. "You minx. I _knew _you'd want to order me about."

"_What?_ I need you to tell me my name, truly, it's not—"

"_Hermione._"

He said it on a lush and humid breath, his eyes wavering in their already drowsy hold on what was right in front of him.

Before she could explain that she hadn't meant for him to say her name with quite that degree of sensual heat, he leaned fully over her, dropped his eyes closed, bunched the side of her chemise in his fist and swept his tongue past her still open lips.

He tasted the way the purple potion smelled, like tart cherry and clandestine sugar.

She tilted her head back, desperate for air around his mouth. "You're awake."

"Mmm." He seemed committed to what he was doing. "Good morning."

"Good morning." Hermione gasped as his mouth left hers, and his parted lips searched over her chin and down to her throat, then further, to the dip at the base of her neck.

"_Gods_, Hermione." He traced his lips over the length of her collarbone, hovering a fraction of a millimeter over her, applying the merest hint of touch against the tips of the fine hairs that rose up from her skin. From there, he shifted up the line of her neck again, until he reached the tender patch of skin under her ear. He placed a soft, slight lick there with the point of his tongue.

Desire boarded Hermione's body like a band of pirates.

"_Draco,_" she said with near-hysterical urgency. "You're brain damaged."

His mouth paused just as it began its diminutive licking at the lowest curve of her earlobe.

He lifted his head to look down on her, and frowned.

"_That's _rude."

"No." Hermione gripped at his shoulders. "Your brain is damaged. You've struck your head while riding a broom."

His brow knitted, and he shook his head.

"That doesn't make any sense. I'm incredible on a broom."

She pushed at him, with an admitted and absolute lack of pressure, to no effect. "It was a very old broom."

Draco blinked as though clearing his eyes. He sat up more completely on his elbow, and peered around the half-lit room. Dawn was wrapping up its opening act for the day, and Draco took in the space, with its velvet curtains, pastoral paintings, woven tapestries and antique furnishings.

The furrow between his brows deepened.

He looked down at Hermione's night dress.

"What in Merlin's name are you wearing?"

He looked at his own. "What am _I _wearing? Is this a dress?"

Hermione could only stare.

"It looks like a poor person's dress. From old person times." His nose wrinkled with displeasure. "Am I poor? Am I old?" He rolled over onto his side and ran his hand down his chest and abdomen. "No, I'm not."

He blinked again, and looked around the room with greater discernment. "Are we at a Renaissance Faire, Granger?" He looked back at her, and his brow lifted. "I have to say, of the many scenarios I've imagined us landing in bed together, a Renaissance Faire was not one of them."

"We're not at a Renaissance Faire." Hermione could feel her cheeks coloring. "And, Draco—" He'd started to dip his mouth back down to her ear, and she pushed at his shoulder until he sat up again. "We didn't sleep together."

He narrowed his eyes and looked down at Hermione in her chemise.

"We're in bed right now." He ran the tip of his finger over the delicate lace edging of her collar. "You've got lace bits on. And I'm not wearing any pants."

"Well—yes, we've _slept _together—"

"How many did you get?" He shut his eyes and shook his head. "No, don't answer that. My performance is far better when I'm sober. I'll show you."

Ignited with fresh conviction, he brought his mouth down to her throat and sucked on it with light pressure.

"_Oh, gods_." She clamped a hand over her mouth and closed her eyes tight, trying to gain her composure, but as he worked at her skin with his lips and tongue she heard herself whimper. "We've _slept _together, these last two nights—_oh!_"

"_Two _nights?" he muttered against her skin. "I can accept, however grudgingly, that I've managed to black out on one occasion, but two is ridiculous. Is this nice?"

"Merlin help me, it is—no! That's not what I mean. We _slept._ We've never had sex."

He continued to work his way up her neck, then placed kisses across her jaw and chin until he found her mouth again.

"Mmmmf," she said, with meaning.

"We haven't?" he asked between deep, exploratory forays past the borders of her teeth. "Do we not do this? I feel like we do this."

"No, we never do."

"Why not?"

"Because you want to do this with _everyone._"

He looked taken aback. "Everyone? That seems excessive."

"I certainly think it is."

He paused in thought, then finally shrugged, and when he crashed his mouth against hers again, he shifted a hand beneath the sheets until he found the hem of her chemise. Without further ado, he smoothed his palm over the side of her thigh, along her hip and bare waist, then came to rest against her ribs just below her breast.

To her horror, she arched her back and made a pettish, whining sound, which served to encourage his hand higher and make him answer her with impatient noises of his own.

"Draco, I'm your sister," she said, breathing hard as his mouth drew away from hers in a kind of feint before vigorously re-engaging. She was having a hard time keeping her eyes open.

As her words settled in, his hand stopped in its quest for more intimate flesh. He pulled back and regarded her.

"No, I don't think you are."

"I am."

He frowned. "But I want to have sex with you."

He resumed kissing her, and his hand squeezed tentatively at the underside of her breast.

"Cressida will be here any minute," she said, trying another tack.

"What's a Cressida?" he asked.

"One of the blondes."

He didn't release her this time, only shook his head without taking his mouth away from hers.

"I prefer spicy little brunettes."

"But she'll be joining us any second."

"No, thank you. I don't want her to be a part of this. I don't like that."

"You have orgies every weekend, I—_oh!_" Hermione cried out softly as his hand made its move. She wanted to slam her hands back over her mouth.

"Orgies?" He drew back yet again, incredulous. "That's too much work. Too much body. I just want one body." He looked down at his own hand as it pulled appreciatively at her breast. "I want _this _one."

With that, he dove back into her mouth.

She turned away in an attempt to regain some sense, and he reoriented himself to her ear, where he began nipping and sucking at the soft skin of her earlobe.

"It's because it's the one that's right in front of you," she said, panting hard.

There was an awareness rolling around in the back of the odds and ends drawer of her mind that the way she'd begun pulling at his hair was a singularly ineffective way of communicating that he ought to stop.

"Mmmm, it is, isn't it." His hand quested across her sternum to pay a visit to the opposite breast. He pinched it.

"_Dear gods_, you're a sex zombie." She was breathless and still tugging in wanton bursts at the sides of his hair.

He looked up at her and wrinkled his nose. "I don't think those words should be next to one another."

Pulling out of Hermione's grip on his hair, he slid down her body mouth-first, leaving a trail of wet marks along the center of her chemise. "Merlin, I want to go down on you. Scratch that, I'm going to live down here. I'm moving in right now. Have all my owls forwarded to_ between Granger's thighs._"

His mouth slid over the curve of her abdomen below her navel, and her entire body lit up like a Christmas tree.

"You smell . . ." he mumbled hungrily. "You smell . . ." He stopped. "Why can't I smell you?" He pressed his face against her belly, breathed in, then did the same in the space between her hip bone and her thigh, then he moved up and crushed his nose straight into her armpit. He huffed, twice. "What the hell, Granger?"

Finally, he pulled his hand out from underneath Hermione's chemise and brought it to his forehead. "Gods _damn, _my head hurts."

Hermione's chest heaved. Through the haze of shock and incendiary lust, she heard footsteps in the carpeted length of the hall.

"Malfoy! Someone's coming."

Before he could react, she pulled out of his arms. She made a hard, fast military roll off the edge of bed. Once she was on the floor, she tugged her chemise back down over her waist.

Simultaneously, she blessed and cursed her woefully frayed knickers.

"No!" he whined, reaching one of his long arms after her. "Come back up here, you saucepot. It doesn't matter that you don't have any smell whatsoever. I won't hold it against you."

"You're my brother," Hermione said urgently, crawling towards the chaise. "I don't care if you believe me or not."

"I don't."

Hermione found her dressing gown tossed over the side of the chaise, and drew it around herself. "Alright, don't believe me. But you have to say you are to the people who are about to walk in. Draco, _please_. It's terribly important."

"If I say I'm your brother, will you come back to bed so we can have sex?"

"No," Hermione hissed. "Absolutely not. We work together, and you're a _very loose man_—"

"I don't feel loose. I feel unloose. The opposite of loose."

"Witches are all over you, Malfoy. And a fair few wizards. It's ridiculous. You wear these trousers—"

"Aha!" Draco sat up in the bed. "_That _I do know about." He pointed at her. "You like my trousers."

Hermione flushed scarlet. "No, I do not."

"And my hair. You like my hair. You love it, actually." He pulled his hand through the disheveled two inches of hair he had sprouted overnight, and frowned again. "Sweet merciful mother of—what's been done to it?"

"You've been asleep for two—"

At that moment, someone knocked at the door, and then opened it.

Cressida carried the pot of salve on its little tray, and she rounded the edge of the door to find Draco sitting up in his bed.

He leaned back and folded his hands over his lap.

"Hello. You must be the blonde."

Cressida dropped the tray to the floor. "Mr. Granger!" Salve went spraying in unctuous globs up into the air and spattered over the back of the door, and as the room took on the sharp smell of sap and citrus, Cressida rushed into action.

She was by Draco's bedside in a flash, taking his pulse by hand. She looked over his monitoring spells with a keen eye, and then went to the Floo.

Within moments, Healer Bartholomew emerged through the hearth, bag in hand, fastening the buttons on his waistcoat.

Hermione grabbed her book from the chaise and withdrew from the room while Bartholomew and Cressida fussed over an amused and perplexed Draco.

She'd left the memory potion in a drawer in the bureau in her room, and tossing her book on her bed, she slipped the bottle into the pocket of her dressing gown and rushed back across the hall.

Back in Draco's room, she found an unobtrusive position at the edge of a chair by the window.

Bartholomew shined a light from the tip of his wand into Draco's eye. "Can you tell me your name?"

Draco lifted his brow with imperious confidence.

"Draco Malfoy."

Bartholomew flicked a glance at Cressida, then looked over his shoulder at Hermione. "Are you connected with that family, Miss Granger?"

Hermione clutched at the skirt of her chemise. "Not at all."

"That's a bold faced lie, Granger," said Draco. "You've known me since—"

"Is he going to be alright, Healer Bartholomew?" Hermione interrupted, shifting further forward in her chair.

Bartholomew frowned in thought. "I'm going to ask you a few more questions, Draco. Can you tell me what year it is?"

"Two thousand—"

In her chair, Hermione played at a desperate and rapid motion game of charades.

She swiped the edge of her hand across her throat, and when Draco stopped and looked, she flashed ten fingers, and then eight.

"Ten . . . eight," said Draco. "It's ten eight."

Hermione shook her head.

"No, that's not right." Draco's eyes narrowed while he considered her frantic gestures. "Eighteen?"

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief, and flashed four fingers.

"Four? Eighteen four?"

Hermione made an O with her fingers and thumb, then held up four fingers again.

"Oh! Eighteen oh-four." Draco's smug smile was short-lived, replaced almost immediately with a horrified grimace. "1804? I don't like hearing that."

Bartholomew looked grave. "Can you tell me who I am?"

Draco looked him over. "You look like someone I saw in _A Complete History of Wizarding Britain, Volume Three _once. Only you were in black and white and your mustache was much larger."

"Can you tell me who that is?" Bartholomew indicated Hermione.

Draco smiled again, just as smug as before.

"That's my _sister."_ He winked at Hermione. "She likes to boss me around, but I think we ought to take turns."

"Good," said Bartholomew. "We're going to run some spells in a moment, but I can tell you that this is extraordinary progress. Unprecedented, even. Miss Cressida, can you help me with the runes for the brain imaging spell, please?"

While Bartholomew and Cressida set about working a multi-phased spell over a large square of parchment on the table by the window, Hermione hurried to sit beside Draco on the bed.

He immediately laid his hand over the upper part of her thigh.

"You need to take this," she whispered, drawing the glass globe from her pocket and pushing it towards him. "Five drops, under the tongue. Quick, _please. _I'm not supposed to be giving you these potions."

"Always such a rule breaker, Granger. As soon as it's my turn, I'm going to take you over my—"

"No! There's no time for that."

"I would _absolutely _like us to make time for that."

Hermione looked over her shoulder, then yanked the tiny cork from the bottle. "Open your mouth."

Draco looked warily at the bottle. "What's it going to do?"

"Just open your mouth, you wretched man."

She expected more fight, but he rolled his eyes, dropped his jaw and lifted his tongue.

Checking to ensure Bartholomew and Cressida were still engaged in their work, Hermione let five drops fall into Draco's mouth.

It did in fact have a powerful odor of cabbage, but Draco seemed not to notice it.

He clapped his mouth shut, looked speculative for a moment, then his eyes squeezed tightly closed. He laid a hand over his forehead and slumped over on his elbow.

Hermione corked the bottle and secreted it away in her pocket before moving back to her chair in the corner.

"We're ready, Mr. Granger," said Bartholomew.

"Mr. Granger?" Draco bit out. "What the blazes do you mean by—"

His face scrunched up even tighter as a wave of tension appeared to move through him.

"Draco?" Hermione dug at the heels of her palms with her fingernails.

"I believe we can expect some continued headaches," said Bartholomew.

Just as abruptly as Draco's discomfort had begun, he relaxed.

He opened his eyes and looked around the room, first at Bartholomew, and then at Cressida, and at last, at Hermione.

He was already pale, but any hint of color drained immediately from his face.

He looked pointedly at her body in her thin chemise, then down at his own, then back to her again. "What have I done?"

Hermione stood. Her body throbbed at the recollection of his hand below her chemise, and then burned with the shame of her own unambiguous desire. "Nothing to trouble yourself over. We've all fallen off our brooms at one time or another."

His eyes grew round with horror. "I would never have—"

"Of course you wouldn't. It's alright. I'm going to dress now."

"Hermione, I—"

"Please, don't worry yourself. We need never mention it again."

Before he could say anything more, she passed through the door, leaving Draco in the capable hands of Cressida Longbottom.

She was unequal to the rank humiliation of remaining in Draco's presence for the rest of the day.

She had done nothing wrong, but in putting her cold feet against Draco's side, she'd thrown open a Pandora's box.

Her body ached after him.

They would return, no doubt, to the cottage once Draco was deemed well enough to be moved, but until then she could take refuge in the singular loveliness of the grounds of Bugg-Buntley Hall.

The bower of the elm standing in the lawns beckoned, and she hid herself away there, leaning against the arm of the bench with her book unopened in her lap.

"May I disrupt you for just a moment, Miss Granger?"

It was Roland again, sweeping away a branch with one hand.

"Please do." Hermione sat up on the bench.

"I shan't bother you for long." He took a seat beside her. "I've only stopped by to say goodbye. I leave for Devonshire presently."

Hermione leaned forward in surprise. "Leaving? Will you come back?"

"I will. Before you even know that I'm gone."

"I'm very glad to hear it." Without warning, a yawn overtook her, and she laid her hand over her book.

"Miss Granger," Roland began. He paused, and squinted through the branches. When he looked at her again, his eyes were searching and serious. He laid his hand over hers. "I'm more grateful to hear of your brother's recovery than I can say."

His hand was soft. It felt exotic and unknown and entirely familiar.

She turned her hand over, curled her fingers around his, and pressed.

"Thank you. Will you return in time for the ball?"

"Of course."

Hermione suddenly recollected the book.

"Oh! I have something for you." She pulled her hand from his, and held out the volume of _Entheogenic Potionery and the Alchemy of the Mind _that had been resting in her lap. "I made you a copy yesterday. I'd entirely forgotten about it until just now."

"Indeed!" Roland took the book from her and stroked his hand over the cover. "Thank you, Miss Granger."

"I've been struggling to understand its contents, but I believe the meaning is there for those who care to find it."

"I shall endeavor to grasp any knowledge Miss Granger deems worthy of mastery."

Hermione smiled. "Shall we discuss your conclusions when you've returned? At the ball?"

Roland rose from the bench, and held out his hand.

Hermione hesitated, then laid her fingers across his.

Bending low, he pressed his lips to the back of her hand. He looked up at her through his dark lashes with an expression of unreserved interest. "At the ball." His lips brushed against her skin as he spoke.

He dropped her hand and walked away backwards, his smile crooked and without artifice of any kind.

Hermione folded her hands in her lap. "You're a flirt, Mr. Weasley."

He laughed. "That implies a lack of fastidiousness, Miss Granger." He lifted his brow. "Save me the first dance?"

Hermione nodded. "I shall."

"Until then!"

"Until then."

He bowed and turned away, whistling past the branches of the bower and into the sunlight, his book clutched in his hand.

Hot and tired, Hermione returned to the hall.

It was, for the moment, quiet while the family stitched, read and, in Sir Thomas' case, softly snored on the chaise in the drawing room.

She went upstairs, and as she passed by Draco's room, she heard the low voices of Cressida and Healer Frederickson. Hermione's heart hitched in her chest at the sound of Draco himself, his voice amiable, helpful, and without a hint of agitation.

She didn't pause to listen.

The windows of her own room faced north, and the space was dark, cool and soundless.

She yanked at the edge of the white lawn fichu Margaret had tucked around her shoulders that morning, and sat down hard on her bed.

Reaching between her traitorous, libidinous breasts, she pulled out the leather bag, tipped the Time Turner into her palm, and sifted through its parts.

She set the pieces on the night table, beside the original copy of _Entheogenic Potionery and the Alchemy of the Mind._

She sighed, and flopped backwards on the bed.

Something tickled at the back of her memory.

An ill-conceived letter.

A silly girl aggrieved by the near-destruction of her own virtue.

The shelter of an obliging book.

She sat up.

Her skin prickled as she picked up the volume beside the bed and opened the front cover.

The title page stared at her, plain and crisp.

There was nothing whatsoever inside.


	8. Chapter 8: The Ball

"Do I need clarity?"

Ron shrugged. "I'm probably not the right person to ask."

Hermione drummed her close-bitten fingernails against the clear glass top of the case, glowing with downlights whose purpose was to demonstrate the importance of exactly that: clarity. A lack of the sort of interior complications that are tucked so deep inside they need a keen eye aided by a jeweler's loupe to find them.

"I'm not convinced that outside of the lighting conditions in a jewelry case it's all that important," she said.

"It ought to be nice, though, Mione." Ron, leaning his hard-muscled frame against the glass, glanced up at the shop clerk, a young woman who was as lustrous as the plain gold wedding band they'd already priced for Ron. "We can afford clarity, Claire."

"If it's a question of budget, I will always advise a better quality, smaller—" Claire began, pushing at the sleeve of her black blazer above the coil key ring around her wrist.

"Our budget is 1,260 Galleons." Hermione leaned closer to the case and pointed at a round-cut solitaire diamond in a four-pronged setting on a basic gold band. "That one seems a bit more practical than some of the others."

Claire reached into the case, pulled the ring from its cushion and checked its price tag before placing it on a black velvet mat on the counter. "This one is 775 Galleons. It has a point seven five carat stone, excellent cut, with the VVS1 rating we discussed. Pardon me." As she turned and sneezed into the crook of her arm, her lacquered chignon didn't shift a millimeter.

"We can do 1,300 Galleons, though," said Ron.

"1,260," Hermione corrected.

Ron rolled his eyes. "You're going to wear it for the rest of your life. It ought to be something you really fancy." He tapped the glass. "Get one like this, with the smaller diamonds at the side. It's a bit more flash."

"Have you set the date?" Claire looked between them with pleasant, professional interest.

"We're not engaged," Hermione said, shaking her head.

Claire shifted away from them by a degree. "Oh."

"This is just the pre-shopping for the rings before the real shopping for the rings." Ron picked up the solitaire ring and slipped it over the tip of his little finger.

Sensing a sale wasn't in the cards, Claire's face, with its flawless ten-step-skincare complexion and jewel-case glow, fell. "I'll give you both a moment to look at this one, shall I?"

She slid along the counter and became absorbed in making microscopic rotations of the display stands of rings and bracelets inside one of the long jewel cases.

"She doesn't know about Phase Three of the five-year plan," Ron said out of Claire's earshot. "Now that we've successfully completed a full year of pre-engagement relationship counseling and done the ring budgeting, we're allowed to do the pre-shopping, then after this we'll do the shopping, and perhaps the post-shopping—"

Hermione rolled her eyes.

"—and then," he continued, "I may propose at any time of my choosing between September and Christmas."

"You're not _allowed_ anything, Ronald," she whispered.

His mouth pulled up at the corner. "You know, that's just what I was saying to Sandra in our appointment the other day—"

She pushed at his shoulder. "You know what I mean."

He laid his hand over hers and pressed it.

A bell above the shop door chimed.

"Welcome to Wilcox and Abernathy," Claire began by rote before her perpetual half-smile became something much more interested, bright, and hungry. "Miss Parkinson!"

Hermione watched as Claire crossed the shop to kiss the air next to Pansy Parkinson's genetic lottery-winning cheekbones.

Pansy wore a pair of black cigarette trousers and an oversized menswear-style button-up shirt—which, on second glance, appeared to be an actual man's shirt—but she looked immaculate, pulled together and rendered in the same level of scrupulously carefree detail as one of the professionally styled women in Hermione's fashion magazines.

Claire, appearing to be on the same terms with Pansy as any clerk with a customer who comes in regularly and spends a great deal of money, gripped Pansy's hand with limp upper class affection, then let it go. "Tea?"

Pansy lifted a pair of enormous black sunglasses from her eyes and settled them at the top of her head. "_Gods, _yes. I wasn't permitted a wink last night—" She stopped talking when she noticed Ron and Hermione standing beside the ring case.

"Hey, Pans." Ron lifted his hand in a half-hearted wave.

Hermione turned to him. "'Pans'?" she mouthed.

"Yeah." He looked at Hermione. "What? She's been at lads' night for the past two months."

"_Pansy Parkinson_ has been at lads' night." Hermione blinked. "Why do you even bother calling it lads' night?"

"It's for any sort of lad. Tall lads, short lads, lads who are ladies. Do you want to come?"

"No. Of course not."

Ron shrugged.

Hermione watched out of the corner of her eye as Claire brought Pansy a cup and saucer.

"What are we after today?" she asked, prepared to get to work spending Pansy's money.

Pansy glanced at Ron and Hermione. "I'll take the earrings I had you hold back last week. Both pairs." She paused, eyes narrowed in thought, then said, "And I need a watch."

"For yourself, or—?"

Pansy sipped her tea, then swallowed and shook her head. "Not for me."

While Claire began pulling specimens from the watch case, Ron leaned in close and put a kiss against Hermione's shoulder.

"What was that for?" Hermione peered through the top of the jewelry case.

"You know what we could do instead of all this?" he said, voice low.

"What?"

"You could forget to take your potion for a day, or two, or ten," he looked up at her with calculated, waggish charm through his eyelashes, "and I could go ahead and knock you up on accident like everyone else does with their first and third kids. Then we could take one of those ghastly family rings Mum's got her heart set on us using, have a quick Ministry ceremony, and spend some of the wedding money on two weeks of shagging and overpriced room service in the south of France." He kissed her shoulder again. "Our preventive couples therapy could be preventive _family_ therapy."

"I can't take off for two whole weeks. Malfoy would blow up my lab and probably spread his Italian loafer curse all over the Ministry." Hermione frowned. "And good _gods_ you're broody."

"I am."

"We've discussed this. We don't even get to preconception steps until year nine of the ten-year—"

"No. I know." Ron shifted away and stood up to his full height. "I was only joking."

"It needs to be able to withstand getting wet." At the other end of the shop, Pansy held a gold watch in her hands, turning it over and examining it with a critical eye.

"Will the gentleman be diving, or . . .?" Claire asked.

"I'm sure there will be an occasional complete soaking"—Pansy set the watch aside with an air of dismissal—"but it's more of an ongoing, high humidity situation."

"We can easily apply additional layers of waterproofing charms for an active lifestyle to any timepiece." Claire held out another watch, this one in white gold. "We also offer charms to protect against grit, dirt, and dust, if that applies."

"That applies in the extreme." Pansy picked up her tea cup, and turned towards Hermione and Ron. She glanced down at the ring case where they stood, then gave them a thin, charm school smile that didn't meet her eyes.

"It seems that congratulations are in order."

Hermione shook her head, opening her mouth to protest, but Ron spoke first.

"Thanks very much." He pulled the solitaire ring off his little finger, and took Hermione's left hand in his. With care, he slipped the ring onto her finger.

"Look at that." He smiled at her. "First one you've tried on, and it's just your size."

Hermione twisted the ring from side to side.

"I'm concerned I'll get hung up on something in the lab. We have a lot going on in there."

"You could take it off for work, I suppose. Malfoy will probably only give you grief over it anyway. It's beautiful, but not exactly a priceless artifact from the vaults."

"I'd love to see what Malfoy would come up with for an engagement," she said. "It would probably have a gem the size of a quail egg and involve a solid week of curse breaking."

Her skin pulled tight as she worked the ring back over her knuckle. She set it on the black velvet cushion in front of her.

"It's lovely." She sighed. "I do like it. Quite a lot."

"But?" asked Ron.

Hermione rubbed at her finger where the ring had chafed. "I'm just not sure that it's the right fit."

Dear Mr. Weasley,

Dear Roland,

Rolly,

I hope this doesn't disappoint you, but I didn't write that letter.

You're extremely handsome, and intelligent, and funny, and you seem very kind, but this could never have worked. I'm from the future.

I regret to inform you that you're the great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather of a man I've been to bed with.

"Oh, _gods._"

Hermione cast an aggravated Vanishing spell at the parchment in front of her.

Tossing her quill down in frustration, she rose from the small desk in the corner of her room, and made her way downstairs to breakfast.

Grix hovered at the stove, scooping up bowls of oat bran porridge, while Martin sat at the dining table, writing in a small paperbound journal with a trembling hand.

"Sleep well back in your own bed, such as it is?" Grix set a bowl in front of Hermione, then pushed a wide dish of deep red strawberries closer to her. "Eat these up. The Hall grows the best strawberries in England, and I don't say that to blow smoke up Sir Thomas' backend. You've been under a lot of stress, and they'll keep you healthy."

Hermione dropped a berry into her mouth and bit down.

"Oh, _Merlin,_ these are glorious." She grabbed a handful. "I did sleep well, thank you."

"Has our lad got his sniffer back up to snuff yet?" asked Martin, sipping at his green tea.

"I don't know. I was hoping he'd join us for breakfast, at least, but I knocked twice this morning and he didn't answer."

Grix frowned as he sat down at the table and spread his serviette across his lap. "That's two days of missed meals. I'll make you another tray to bring up and see if he does any better with it."

"Thank you very much." Hermione polished off her strawberries in silence and made her way through half a bowl of oats before setting her spoon down. She tapped a fingertip on the thin handle of her teacup.

"What's on your mind, then?" asked Grix, spooning granules of bee pollen onto his oats.

"I'm having trouble . . . expressing something."

"Are you, now?" Grix chuckled. "I find that surprising. But alright."

"I need to tell someone something, but I can't come right out with the truth of the matter."

"Do it allegorically. Loaves and fishes! Tell them you've fed five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, and four thousand with seven loaves and two fishes, and baked ten loaves with four score and seven fishes, and they'll catch your meaning." Martin waved his arm, sloshing a mouthful of tea over the rim of his cup.

"Stick a fork in your fish loaves." Grix cleaned away the spill with a wave of his hand.

"I need to be clear enough to prevent things from going further than they already have, but at the same time, I can't come right out and say what I really mean." Hermione huffed out a breath of frustration."There are reputations, and feelings, and potential ill will. I can't say too much, but is what I _can_ say going to get the point across?"

Grix looked at Martin, then back at Hermione. He jerked his thumb towards Martin. "You're making about as much sense as this one."

"Gods, I know." Hermione groaned, rubbing a hand against her eyes. "I suppose what I ought to say, and be very simple about it, is that there's been a mistake. And that I'm very sorry to have misled anyone."

Martin nodded. "Apologize! And then be honest. He'll forgive you eventually."

"Here here. There's some sensible-sounding prognostication for you at last." Grix got up from the table, dropped his bowl in the sink, and began to gather breakfast things on a tray. He climbed up onto a stepping stool, and pulled a paper-wrapped rectangle down from a high cupboard. "Would your brother fancy a bit of chocolate?"

Martin craned his neck around to look. "Oh ho! I see you there!"

"No, you don't." Grix held the packet up and looked at Hermione in inquiry.

"Thank you very much." She rose from the table. "I can certainly try."

"Draco?"

Hermione rapped three times at the bedroom door, and called his name for the second time in as many minutes.

At last, he answered.

"Come in."

She pushed through the doorway, balancing the breakfast tray against her hip.

The linens on Draco's bed had been straightened with care, and he sat, fully dressed, on top of them, leaning against the headboard with a book propped open on his knees. As Hermione entered, he picked up a length of pink ribbon from the table beside his bed, laid it between the pages, and closed the book.

"I've brought breakfast." She set the tray down on the bed and, careful to avoid jostling a full cup at its edge, slid it closer to him.

He glanced at the tray. "I can't taste anything."

"I know. I'm so sorry. Martin is fully convinced he remembers having invented a potion that will bring your sense of smell back. So far it makes everything smell of bacon grease and wet wool, but he'll get there. In the meantime, you still need to eat."

He thought for a moment, then sat up at the edge of the bed and nodded. "Alright. Thank you."

She hesitated. She knew she ought to leave him alone to eat what he could, but of their own accord, her feet carried her around the end of the bed and to his side.

He looked up as the mattress beside him sank under her weight, then trained his eyes, stony and impassive, on the wainscot.

His hair had regrown so that it approached its former glory, and at some point over the two days since they'd returned to the cottage, he'd trimmed the back and sides. A pale scar still cut through his eyebrow, but otherwise he was himself again, stoical and coolly handsome.

Except that he wasn't himself at all.

Hermione would have thought it impossible, but he was paler than before. His scrapes and bruises were healed, but there were dark circles beneath his eyes, and his eyelids were red-rimmed and swollen.

"Good book?" she asked, nodding towards the thick volume he'd set aside. There was no title on its spine or cover.

"The book?" He touched it's corner reflexively. "It's alright. Muggle. There's a girl, who's lovely. The stepmother is terrible. Strong anti-French sentiment."

"Have you been sleeping?" she asked.

He shook his head. "Not really."

"You need to sleep. Your progress has been remarkable, but Healer Bartholomew has stressed several times that you need to get adequate rest."

She reached across them both to where his hands lay limp over his knees, and as she folded her right hand over his left, he twitched bodily as if she'd given him a static shock.

"Draco?" She squeezed his hand. "Please talk to me."

With the briefest of glances, he flashed her an expression of incredulity. "Talk?" Laughing, curt and dry and joyless, he pulled his hand out of her grip. "I don't know how you're even able to look at me."

Hermione drew her hands back into her own lap and folded them. "I'm sorry, I don't understand."

He turned to look at her fully for the first time since she'd entered the room.

His eyes were great damp pools, aching and remorseful. "How am I ever going to make this right?"

"I understand that things are . . . well, they're awkward. There's no denying it. They don't need to continue to be, but I can't help if I don't know what's the matter."

"That morning." His shoulders rose and shivered. "You couldn't have _possibly_ wanted—" He stopped, his jaw clenching hard as he swallowed.

She shifted towards him and took both of his hands in hers. "Draco, if you've been feeling guilty, please leave off immediately. I was tremendously happy when you woke."

He kept staring at the wall.

"I was deathly afraid that you wouldn't wake up," she went on, "then you _did._ My recollections of that morning are of joy. Nothing more. Please. You mustn't feel like you've done anything wrong."

He pulled his hands away and crossed his arms over his abdomen as though he were fighting back a wave of nausea.

"Hermione." He tightened his grip around himself. "I _touched_ you."

Her heart rate picked up at the recollection of Draco's hand under her chemise. The weight of his body between her legs. His fingers pinching hard at her—

"Yes, I suppose you did," she said, disrupting thoughts of breasts and hands and the feel of his hair between her fingers. Her mouth twitched in an involuntary half-smile, and she puffed out an anxious, breathy laugh. "But you were by no means the only one."

"I haven't been able to leave off thinking about your autonomy," he said, voice heavy with disgust. "Your privacy." The corners of his mouth trembled downward. "And then your _engagement_. Gods help me." He covered his face with his hand. "I'll explain everything to Ron when we get back, if you think it would be better coming from me."

His hands fell to his lap again, and he looked ahead, hard and determined.

After a stretch of silence, his brow twitched downwards.

"What do you mean, I wasn't the only one?"

While he sat and thought, Hermione searched for a way to rewind and rephrase what she'd said. "When I say touch, I don't mean—"

He turned to her. "You had your hands in my hair."

"What?" Hermione drew herself up until she sat with the same rigid posture she'd carried along with her trunk on her first train to Hogwarts. "Oh! Yes. It was the spirit of the moment, wasn't it? A great deal of excitement, all around."

"It's just that . . ." His eyes fell to the neckline of her dressing gown. "I touched your—"

"You're not the first."

"No, naturally."

"There's no harm done by it. We can move right on as though it never happened."

"But . . ." He trailed off, confusion writ large across his face. "I've thought over and over again about what might have happened if Cressida hadn't come along."

Hermione's chest heaved at the sudden rush of heat that bloomed between her thighs. "As have I, but I think it's best not to dwell on it."

He shook his head. "Of course." His frown remained in place while his eyes tracked from side to side.

He rotated towards her, and as he turned, his knee pressed against hers. "You're saying that you didn't _mind—_"

"I've been considering the dance steps we may be expected to perform at the ball."

Her fingers dove into her decolletage, and drew out a slip of paper. She held it out in front of him.

Draco blinked in confusion. "The what?"

"The steps. For dancing." She unfolded the paper. "_Chassé_ and _assemblé _we were all taught at school, for better or for worse, as well as the _allemande_ and the _bouree._ Lavender assured me that my _demi-jeté_ was quite good, and I've been doing a bit of practicing in my room." Her voice sounded dry and rushed, even to herself. "I was able to wheedle some names of other steps from Martin yesterday while he was supposed to be taking his rest. He mentioned the Strathspey Travelling Step, the Merlin's Muddle and the _pas du cheval_ _affamé,_ none of which I'm familiar with at all. I think he's made the last two up."

The warm weight of Draco's knee was an anchor pulling doggedly at her awareness.

He waved his hand to dismiss the discussion of dance steps.

"I'm sorry, Hermione, but I need to be entirely clear about this. That morning, you must realize . . . I was well on my way to—"

"I propose the strategy we ought to adopt is to engage ourselves only for two or three dances that we can perform with reasonable confidence. Perhaps right at the beginning, for the look of the thing, and keeping to the bottom of the sets so we can watch and copy. I can dance with Martin in his chair at least twice, and you can, I think, safely dance with any of the Longbottom girls save Cressida. Afterwards, we can slip away and begin an organized search of the lower rooms, followed by the upper."

His eyes flicked to the skirt of her chemise. "I might have spent _ages,_ truly, going down on you, and afterwards—"

"Ages?" The paper slipped from Hermione's fingers onto her lap. She picked it back up.

His legs, she considered, were notably firm.

"I suppose if that's what you're used to doing," she said, tugging the edges of her dressing gown together, "there would be an automaticity to heading down there."

He jolted as if affronted. "It's a critical part of the repertoire. You can't simply barge on ahead, I'm sure you'll agree, without properly—"

"Yes, of course. You'll get no argument from me."

"Especially when it's all new, before you've learned the idiosyncrasies of a woman's—"

"I imagine that they're all quite different."

"_So_ different."

"It's perfectly reasonable that without being fully conscious—" Hermione stopped upon realizing she'd tilted forward from the waist until she was angled well into Draco's personal space.

She pulled back, but at the same time, he shifted towards her, so that the net result was continued upper body proximity.

"I truly thought, in that moment," he said, "that we'd already—"

"We hadn't."

"No, I realized it straight away once I'd taken the potion. Only it's that I thought we'd woken up . . . the morning _after,_ you know?"

"Yes, I know it."

"In that context it seemed reasonable to assume that there could be _more_."

"Perfectly reasonable. There is so often more in those circumstances."

"You sleep, and then you wake up, and if things went well, and everyone is amenable, you go back in for another round of—"

"You do! Just"—with her hand, Hermione pantomimed a swimmer leaping from a diving board—"in you go again."

"And in the morning . . . well, there's an appetite for it, really."

"It's strange how that is, isn't it?" Hermione spoke with attentive and dispassionate interest. "But undoubtedly it's when you _most_ want—"

Draco looked down between them, and Hermione's eyes followed.

Her hand was splayed over the top of his thigh.

She withdrew it, and shifting sideways on the bed, nudged her list of dances back between her breasts.

"Without the benefit of a floor plan," she said, folding her hands in her lap, "I believe we'll need to each begin our search for the snuff box on an opposite end of the house, and work towards the center."

Draco stared hard at her breasts. "So you were … " he trailed off and waved a hand at her bosom, then looked up at her face. "Fine. With it."

"No problem at all."

"I see." He sat silently for a quarter of a minute. "Would you—" He stopped again, then looked at her sidelong. "Would you go so far as to say that you—"

"I didn't take it personally in the least," Hermione said hurriedly, "as often as you must find yourself in similar circumstances."

"_Often?_"

"These are the most beautiful strawberries." Hermione gestured to the tray.

"Are you saying that because of—"

"We agreed." Hermione's pulse jumped.

"Hermione—"

"We said, and you agreed. The subject is closed."

For a moment it seemed as though he meant to continue regardless of whether the subject was open, shut, or anything in between, but he closed his mouth, looked over at the tray and nodded.

"Strawberries," he said.

"Yes. They're _very_ good."

"They look it. Have you made me a coffee?"

"I have."

Without facing her, Draco took her hand in his, strummed his thumb over her knuckles, then gave it a pulse, and let it go.

The sun was a straw-colored coin in the west when Hermione finally sat down in the chair beside the desk in her room, pushing at the silk bodice of her ball gown.

"Merlin, my nipples are only just there!"

"Oh, come now, Miss Granger. It's lovely."

Margaret McClure kneeled on the floor between Hermione's open thighs, tying the tops of a pair of white stockings with black ribbon.

"No, I can see the edge of the left one peeking out." Hermione threaded a fingertip under the neckline. "I know my own nipples."

Margaret neatened the second bow and stood, gesturing for Hermione to turn so she could begin on her hair.

"Mr. Fernberry dresses every one of London's smartest witches, Miss Granger. You have nothing to worry about. Mr. Martin's instructions, written in his own hand, were to fetch you a gown, and I quote, 'in the very latest style, and spare no expense,' which is just what I've done. This came straight from Mr. Fernberry himself, by Floo. He's so _very_ neatly dressed, Miss Granger, I never did see a man with so many ruffles and ribbons, only it never looked overdone. He kohls his eyes, can you believe it? And his _hair! _So thick and shiny at his age. Mr. Granger's pales in comparison if I may say so, which of course it must do, as Mr. Fernberry's is ever so dark. He brought this gown by, wrapped in lovely pale pink paper that our Ann kept back, if you don't mind, to use in the ladies' diaries she covers with pretty bits of paper she collects. She sells them at the witches' market on a Saturday." Margaret took a breath. "Mr. Fernberry offered his highest compliments to any friend of Lady Longbottom. He's given Mr. Martin a discount, undoubtedly. I couldn't get half this much of this quality silk in Market Hettlesham for love or money, but I understand that Mr. Martin was a friend of Mr. Fernberry's great-grandfather. We sat him to tea, Ann and I, and we were told quite a tale about Mr. Martin and the elder Mr. Fernberry, gods rest him," Margaret traced the shape of a pentacle over the center of her chest with her right hand, "in their cups and the altogether at the top of Magdalen Tower with the Dean of Transfiguration's daughters, both also in the raw, back when they were young men."

Hermione opened her mouth, then shut it again.

"The girls at the shop were of a unanimous mind that your dress is extraordinary, Miss Granger, and that not even Miss Parkinson could be more elegantly dressed tonight."

"Mr. Fernberry must enjoy a good burlesque show," Hermione muttered.

She leaned forward out of the tug of Margaret's comb, grabbed the bag with the Time Turner off the desk, and secreted it away between her breasts.

She tapped and tamped, but try as she might, the top of the bag and the drawstrings peeked out from the sheer silk at the border of the dress.

While Margaret worked at her hair, Hermione jiggled her foot in agitation.

"I thought, given the gown, we'd add some sparkle to your hair tonight, Miss Granger."

Before Hermione could confirm or deny the wisdom of sparkle anywhere on her person, Margaret summoned an ornate gold comb from her trunk. Its shape was suggestive of bacchanalian pleasures, with gold leaves curling and twining around little garnet-colored berries and ivory flower petals. Nested in the burnished dark mass of Hermione's curls, it looked quite Greek, indeed, standing like a Hellenistic crown over the cascade of wild ringlets framing her face and trailing down her nape.

"There you go, Miss Granger." Margaret reached down, took Hermione's hand, and gave it an affable pair of pats. "You look exquisitely beautiful." She wrinkled her freckled nose. "But can I do your cheeks, at least?"

Hermione thought acres of embroidered silk, nipples like disquisitive meerkats and the crown of a fertility goddess were ample decoration, but she sighed, closed her eyes, and lifted her chin.

"Stop staring, or you'll be poking around the Parkinsons' house for your contemptible guinea pig all by yourself."

Hermione clutched the rail mounted to the wall with one hand and the fabric of her skirts with the other as she stepped gingerly down the stairs.

Draco stood at the bottom and watched her.

He wore white stockings and black breeches, a black waistcoat and a white shirt under a black tail coat; his hand was pushed casually into his trouser pocket and his book held under his arm. As Hermione reached the bottom of the stairs and drew closer, she took note of the pin in his cravat, with a gilded monogram M.

"Where did that come from?" she asked, pointing at the pin.

In the relative dimness of the hall, Draco blinked. "What?" He looked down at his cravat. "Oh. Yes. I nicked it from the Manor when I went after a set of formal dress. Remind me to tell you something rather important about that later. Interestingly enough, this is something that's been handed down to me back at home. I wear it often on formal occasions—on a contemporary tie, obviously."

"Yes! I suppose I've seen it after all." Hermione touched the pin. "M? Won't someone ask?"

Draco looked unconcerned, but with a quick swipe of his wand, the letter morphed into a swirling silver G. "Happy now, dear sister?"

"I am."

"Are you just going to carry your wand about like that?"

In her hand, Hermione held her wand, a slip of parchment, and the bag with the Time Turner.

"I think I have to," she said. "It's not going to fit."

"What's not going to fit where?"

Hermione gestured at her bustline. "Look at this."

Draco looked. "To be completely honest, it's quite difficult not to."

"I'm being serious."

"So am I."

"Stop joking and look down my gown."

Draco didn't move.

"I mean it. Right down there," she said. "Really look."

Draco leaned forward. "I'd like you to be extremely clear with me about what's going on right now."

"This is what's going on."

Hermione jumped up and down half a dozen times and looked down, watching the half-globes of her bosom heave nearly over the side of the proverbial boat.

"This absurd garment leaves nothing to the imagination, for starters—"

"I don't know about that."

"There's room for neither my wand nor the Time Turner down the front."

"Ah."

"Can you see my nipples?" Hermione asked.

"I—" Draco fidgeted with his tie pin. "Do you want me to?"

"Yes, I'd like you to try to find them."

Draco looked. Then looked some more.

"Do you see them?" she asked.

"No. Unless . . ."

He tucked a fingertip into the edge of her neckline, and tugged it down.

Hermione slapped his hand away. "No one's going to be doing that. I suppose as long as I can dance, and you can't see them from your vantage point, it'll have to be alright. I had Margaret try to bring the neckline up, but the damned thing is spelled against alteration. Some designer concoction fit to my exact measurements."

"I can see that, yes."

"It wouldn't be quite so awful if my knickers hadn't finally given up the ghost. It seems there's a limit to the number of Scourgifies one can apply to cotton pants before they disintegrate. Anyway, here." Hermione slapped the bag with the Time Turner against his chest. "You get your wish. You'll have to keep it in your pocket tonight."

He lay his hand over the bag. "Alright."

"Thanks." Hermione looked up from the front of her dress. "You look sweaty. Are you feeling well enough to do this?"

"Do what?" He glanced up from her breasts.

"Dance. Prowl around Thornwood Abbey like a pair of cat burglars."

"Yes, I'm fine." His attention landed on the parchment in Hermione's hand. "Note for someone?"

On impulse, Hermione slipped her hand behind her back.

"It's nothing. How's the stepmother?"

"The what?"  
"In your book." Hermione pointed at it. "Malfoy, you truly don't seem well."

He held up the book and flipped it open indifferently, then snapped it shut again. "I'm fine. The book is fine. It's good. I'm invested. I look forward to finding out what happens at the end."

"Good."

He nodded.

"You look—" Hermione ran her fingers over Draco's jacket sleeve.

His attention snapped to her.

"—quite smart," she finished. "Black looks smart on you. I suppose it always has."

"Thank you." Draco let his eyes wander over all of her then, from the comb in her hair down to her silk slippers, dyed to match her gown. "Red is . . . Granger, you're always so—"

Hermione patted the buttons of Draco's waistcoat. "Quite smart."

She breathed in.

He smelled, as he did each day for as long as Hermione had been accustomed to being close enough to him to tell, of his own admixture of compounds. There were the organic notes of his body, interwoven with the lavender and patchouli fragrance of the soap they'd been sharing in the cottage bath. He smelled of freshly aired wool, too, leather and parchment, and always under everything hovered a cool, clean, sharp scent of mint.

She reached for the lock of hair hanging over his forehead. "And your hair is—"

She was startled by his movements, quick and unexpected. She heard the heavy thud of his book as it fell, but the thin clack of her wand landing on the floorboards sounded almost outside the edges of her awareness.

His mouth was warm and sweet.

His hands cradled her jaw as though she were a thing he might drop and break if he didn't hold her with sufficient care. Between strokes of his tongue, his lips moved against hers, gentle and hushed as he spoke.

"I'm sorry." His fingertips pressed into the hard edge of her jaw. "I'm sorry."

Then he pushed himself away.

"Oh, gods." He wiped the back of his hand across his lips, flushed and slightly bee-stung. "I'm so sorry."

She watched him: the visible pulse at the side of his neck. The rise and fall of his chest under the buttons of his waistcoat. His widened eyes, with traces of red where she knew to look past the charms he'd applied to take away some of the evidence that he couldn't sleep.

"I know you don't—" he began. "I'm so very sorry."

When Hermione stepped towards him, wrapped her hand around the back of his neck, and drew herself up onto her toes, he gasped.

Without further preamble, he pushed her through the three steps backwards to the wall.

His hair was short at the back, the little bristling strands there soft under the pads of her fingers, just as she'd imagined they would be.

"Do you want this?" he asked, and there was unmistakable disbelief in his voice.

The fabric of her skirts rose—the silk of her dress, the linen of her chemise. His palm stroked over the ribbons of her stockings, then above that, the bare skin of the backs of her thighs in a touch that was almost nothing, arriving and then vanishing like a compunctious ghost.

"Please want this," he said, quiet in the fugitive space between their mouths. "Please, Hermione."

He drew his mouth away, and she chased after it. It was not an answer, but he accepted it all the same, and she shivered as his fingertips traced—soft, sweet, slow—over the naked skin of her backside.

"I want to hear you," he whispered. "I want to taste you."

Hermione wanted . . . time.

The part of her that was aware of anything beyond the thoughtless sensations of _him_ and _close_ knew that Grix and Martin were by the front door. A short distance beyond was the family waiting at the Hall, and a step past that, a Floo connection to a ball and a task that would bring them closer to the solution of the problem at hand:

There was no time.

There was too much of it.

It stretched away in front of them, the years and decades lined up like a shelf of unopened books. At the end of the line were the volumes they had lived. Hermione could pull one down, open it, and read histories of the future that was their past.

Both of them had made decisions, hadn't they?

In that moment, she wanted to revise, to recant, to modify the story so that it read something like this:

_A girl met a boy. They were good to one another from the first. They lived that way, and were happy, ever after._

The desire she felt for him—ever-present, despised, and disavowed—grew urgent and brittle between her legs and in her chest.

She wanted to see into unknown volumes.

If she could open tonight, and look inside, she might find: _she said yes, and he took her to bed._

If she finished the paragraph, turned the page and read through to the early morning, it might end: _and he ruined her._

He was waiting for her, kissing her mouth and her cheeks and, once, the lids of her eyes.

A nod or a sigh might be enough. He might want a look, or a word.

She slid her lips down his chin, and along his jaw, mouthing at his skin there, unthinking and senseless. He made a sound near her ear like discontent and gratitude all at once.

She turned the leaves of her book past tonight, and tomorrow, and flipped forward two hundred years, where she found, scribbled in the margins of what would one day be her present again: _If he took her to bed, would it ruin everything?_

"Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies! Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!"

Martin's voice rang out loud from the drawing room.

"That was never a nip of madeira, you old deceiver," Grix grumbled. "They're going to be rolling you home snoring an operetta."

Hermione flattened her hands against Draco's chest and pushed.

_I want this,_ she might have said. _I have wanted this. I have written this question in the margin of each day for longer than I will tell._

His fingertips slid over her skin, and away.

"They're going to come asking after us." She shook her skirts down, and flattened her palms over the silk.

He was pink-cheeked and his hair was wild. She reached up to straighten it, and he caught her hand.

"Hermione."

"There's no time," she said.

She dragged her hand away and bent down, her skirts pooling on the floor around her, and picked up his book, her letter, and her wand.

"Here." She handed him the book, which he accepted in a limp hand.

She pulled herself up tall, a gold-crowned Athena, armored in silk.

"Let's go to the ball."

"Shall we go to the ball? I think we shall! I think we shall!"

The cat gave its mustache a doleful twitch.

"The cat is in evening dress," said Draco through the side of his mouth.

"Yes! Little breeches."

Hermione mashed her face into Draco's sleeve and clutched at his arm, and once the wave of laughter had passed, let him go.

At the vast Floo in the drawing room at Bugg-Buntley Hall, the Longbottom family were gathered in their finery.

"Let the cat put on his pajamas, Father," said Penelope, luscious and lustrous in a pale green gown and already bored. "Or better yet, be in the state the gods intended for him. He's not going to come along and lead a minuet."

"The Gentlemen's Cat Fanciers Society does not agree with you, and neither does Hugo!" Sir Thomas, holding the black and white cat under its front arms, gave it a brief jiggle. "Hugo likes his new suit, don't you my fine, fine fellow!"

Penelope turned away from her father and his cat in a cravat, and then from her sisters, each vibrating on a plane of anticipation Hermione wasn't sure she'd ever visited.

"Would you like to borrow a reticule?" Penelope asked, gesturing at Hermione's wand and note, still held in her hand. "That looks awkward."

"I suppose that would be helpful." Hermione patted at the sides of the skirt of her dress. "Honestly it would be nice to have pockets."

"Pockets?" Penelope perked up and drew her wand out of her own right dress pocket. "Would you like them? It's easily done."

Hermione watched in awe as Penelope traced her wand in a recursive series of loops over one of the side seams of Hermione's dress, muttering _Fitchet Compario_.

Hermione looked down.

"Was that a pocket-making spell?"

"It is. Iris—Mrs. Longbottom I suppose I ought to say—came up with it when we were at school. It's Old English and Latin language and intentionality. Most of the wandwork we learned during a cultural exchange luncheon with a delegation of Han wizards." There was an unpleasant tearing sound as her wand finished its final pass. "_That's_ not right. Has your gown been warded against alteration?" Penelope jammed her hand into the new hole in the left side of Hermione's dress and frowned.

Hermione tested it herself, and found that her hand only went as deep as her second knuckle before her fingertips bumped up against a fold of fabric.

"Merlin, it's the same as those pointless pockets in Muggle women's trousers," Hermione said. "It's like being short-sheeted by H&M every morning."

"Pointless pockets in what?" Penelope looked at Hermione with her eyes narrowed. "Do Muggle women wear trousers?"

Hermione laughed, nervous and self-conscious. "You don't miss a beat, do you Miss Penelope?"

Penelope shook her head of glossy blonde curls, woven through with tiny opalescent beads. "No, I don't." She considered Hermione's gown. "I despise these haute couture confections. What a bunch of indefensible snobbery. Mother loves it, of course." She slid her wand over Hermione's seams once more, one after the other, only it appeared that she combined the pocket spell with a series of assaults on the anti-alteration wards.

After a pause, there was a tremendous tearing sound that attracted the attention of half the people in the room.

Penelope jammed her hand into Hermione's new left pocket.

"There!" she said with evident satisfaction. "Try that."

Hermione tested her right pocket. Its bottom was now so deep that it took her a moment to locate it, but find its corner she did, halfway down her thigh.

She stored her wand in her right pocket and the note to Roland Weasley inside the left.

"Thank you very much, Miss Penelope."

"You could probably fit one of my father's cats in either one," said Penelope. "Hugo in the left and Teddy in the right, hissing at your dance partners."  
Cassandra, face pink and beaming, bounded towards Hermione and looped their arms together. "Izzy's finished with Cressida's hem, so we're all ready to go." She smiled broadly at Draco. "I shan't allow you to give Cressy all your time, Mr. Granger. I'm owed a reel."

Martin, wearing what appeared to be a formal suit from a previous century, in peacock blue velvet with a fountain of tea-colored lace at the front, pushed his spectacles back on his nose.

Cassandra reached over and patted his shoulder so hard he tipped and had to right himself, evidently pleased. "You're needed for a reel as well, Mr. Martin!"

"Scotch and reels!" Martin said.

Hermione looked up at Draco. "Are you ready?"

For a moment, he studied her face.

She'd inspected herself in the mirror in her bedroom. Her dress was, though revealing, spectacularly beautiful, a vibrant red with a sheer silk overlay of the same color and sleeves falling suggestively from her shoulders. Margaret had piled her curls into something only half-tamed, pinked her cheeks and made her lips appear stained, as though she'd been sitting in the sun and eating handfuls of overripe strawberries. Her eyelashes were even thicker than usual, and there was a faint gleam to her skin all over.

"We need to stay focused, Hermione," he answered.

"Why wouldn't we?"

He opened his mouth, and shut it again.

Hermione took his arm, and he laid a protective hand on the back of Martin's chair.

Sir Thomas passed his cat to a waiting elf, and Lady Longbottom, in the palest cool blue, threaded her arm through his.

The Floo flared green, and they stepped through it.

"Your intentions, sir! My quarrel is with your _intentions!_"

William Avery, his suit jacket dangling from a camellia bush, broke free from Sir Thomas and Tom Longbottom and raced across the unlit lawn with his dark hair streaming.

"Bloody well let me _go,_ Weasel!" Before Draco could pull either of his arms free from Roland Weasley's grip, his left temple connected with William's right fist.

"No!" Cressida's voice throbbed, the tears streaming down her cheeks forming irregular wet patches on the white fabric at her bust.

Hermione clutched at the letter in her left pocket and the wand in her right. "You idiotic . . . ludicrous . . . senseless . . . brainless . . . _peacocks!_"

Her stomach lurched.

She hiccuped.

It happened because of the nipples.

"Have you tasted them yet?"

Hermione, plucking at the damp bustline of her gown, half careened into Draco's ready arms.

"No, I haven't," he said, steadying her with his hands at her hip bones.

"Why not? Oh! Because of the—" Hermione pushed her finger against the cartilage of her own nose. "Merlin, I'm so sorry." She stroked his cravat, then gave it a conciliatory pat. "You can't, can you?"

"Unfortunately not."

"They're _really_ lovely."

"I'm sure they are."

"We'll have to do them up for you later, when everything's been put to rights."

Draco gave a noncommittal shrug and swiveled his doleful gaze back over his shoulder at the chocolate truffles.

The truffles were a tragedy.

They posed together on their formal service platter, taunting Draco with their frank culinary eroticism. Their spherical, shiny chocolate shells covered soft ganache insides made with what tasted like a type of mellow nut and a healthy dollop of brandy, and each of them was capped with a little ball of white marzipan.

They looked like nothing so much as tiny brown breasts with diminutive cream-colored nipples.

"Poor nose. You adore chocolate." Hermione pinched the tip of Draco's nose. "Lord, I'm sweating. How are you not sweating? Where's my punch?"

"Here."

Draco, easy and composed in his black suit jacket in spite of having made at least one more trip down the line of the dance than Hermione had done, passed her a fresh cup of punch from the table behind him.

Two thirds of the cup went down with gusto, and she flattened her hand over her forehead. "That's cold!" She winced and peered into the bottom of the cup. "I think there's brandy in this."

"There is."

She laughed, bright and buoyant. "I've been drinking it like water."

"I know."

He'd been standing in an elegant slump against the wainscot at the side of the supper room, but drew up straight at the tell-tale shriek of a lady having her toes run over by a magical power chair.

"Truffle, truffle, truffle . . ." Martin emerged at the doorway to the ballroom from between two women, ruffled by their sudden displacement, and floated across the room, clapping the fingertips of his left hand together like a pair of pincers.

Draco shifted his body so that it disrupted Martin's line of sight to the plate of truffles.

"No more truffles, cousin Martin," said Hermione, "or you'll do yourself in for good, and we'll have to spend the night under the trees."

Draco's hand slid over Hermione's hip and came to rest against her back as she turned away from him.

"Sounds promising." He stroked his palm up her spine. "Let's find you some water."

"I don't need water, I'm fine."

"No, you're not. Oh, _gods. Hermione. _No more dancing."

She felt the tug of his hand at the back of her dress as Roland Weasley came through the door.

He'd been the driving force behind a very great deal of nail-chewing for some days, and the subject of a dozen drafts of a letter Hermione didn't wish to write, and wanted even less to give.

She'd grown more than a little anxious at the thought of seeing him, but in the end, her worry had been for naught.

He rounded the corner from the ballroom in Martin's wake, his auburn hair disheveled from dancing, and his face as inviting and agreeable as ever.

Earlier, in his black breeches and a white waistcoat, he had shared smiles with her over the pleasing correspondence of her dress with the scarlet silk lining of his black tailcoat.

He had been told by a letter conveyed in a book that with only the slightest application, he might help himself to the delights of her person. She'd been terrified he would alter: become over-interested, inappropriate and lecherous.

But in the ballroom of Thornwood Abbey—of truly magnificent proportions, the parquet glossy and its walls hung with long mirrors reflecting hundreds of floating candle flames softly flaring and guttering at their wicks—he had taken her hand, bowed like a gentleman, and smiled like nothing had changed.

For a moment, Hermione was annoyed at the possibility that he hadn't so much as cracked open the cover of the book she'd given him, but by increments, with each genteel pass he made through her orbit as the Grangers were introduced about the ball, the weight of the rejection letter lurking at the bottom of the left pocket of her dress lifted.

_There has been a mistake, and feelings have been communicated to you that I did not intend. Please accept that our friendship can never be more than that. I deeply regret any hurt that my miscommunication may have caused you, but know that I will forever hold you in the highest regard._

_H_

"Miss Granger! They're forming another set." Roland's cheeks were kindled with a happy glow as he leaned against the door frame with a hand in his pocket. "I promise that I'll continue to not hold your gross deficiencies in dancing against you."

Hermione laughed. "One more."

She rotated under Draco's hands again and craned her face up to his, which was now blank and unreadable. "One more."

He frowned, then whispered, "While you're perfecting your chassé with Ye Olde Weasel, I'm going to finish looking through the ground floor rooms."

His focus shifted between her eyes as she stared.

"What?" he asked.

Hermione tilted forward until her chest lay flush against his ribs.

His hand smoothed across her belly.

"I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?"

"That you can't taste the truffles."

"That's not the prob—hold on there, Martin! You only just said you were feeling sick on those ten minutes ago."

Martin had edged closer to the table, and reached an arm around Draco's hip.

Draco handed him a chocolate. "Here. Now go and run over everyone's toes some more."

Martin popped the truffle into his mouth at one go.

"Hm hm _hmm!_"

He flicked the steering toggle of his chair and was off.

Hermione had been misled by every film adaptation she'd ever seen of dancing in a nineteenth century English ballroom.

Once it was your turn, you didn't walk or politely shuffle down the line; you danced, well and truly, and thanked the muses for their divine intervention when your teacakes, so to speak, didn't go flying out of the display.

Roland leaned down and spoke into her ear.

"_Very_ good, Miss Granger."

"I'm doing well?"

Roland's palm met hers in the center of a formation of three couples. He shook his head and laughed.

"No."

They parted, and then returned.

"But you're only the second worst dancer in the room."

Hermione passed under the arm of William Avery, dancing crosswise to her, then stood in front of Roland again.

"Who's the worst?"

He smiled, crooked and teasing.

"It would be impolite of me to say."

"There's no one worse, is there?"

Roland's mouth twitched, then he burst into another laugh. "No. There isn't."

In spite of Roland's vote of no confidence, she finished the dance convinced of her steady improvement, and breathless, pinched a cup of iced punch from a passing tray.

"Pardon me"—she crouched down until her eyes were level with the elf holding the drinks tray over his shoulder—"but might I have the recipe for the chocolate truffles on the sideboard in the supper room? I'd like to pass it along to a friend."

After receiving grudging confirmation from the elf, Hermione lifted onto her toes and searched the room.

"Have you seen my brother, by any chance?" she asked William Avery as he wandered into her sphere, holding a cup of raspberry ice in each hand.

"No. Have you seen Cressida? We were supposed to have had ices."

"I haven't. I suppose she might be in the ladies' room." Hermione gulped at her punch.

Cassandra, hauling on Isadora's arm, and the latter with a steadying hand on the back of Martin's chair, moved through the dense crowd in the ballroom.

"They're starting another set in twenty minutes," said Cassandra. "Willy, dance with Miss Granger, and then we'll sit down to some supper."

"I'll eat beef and _cake!_" Martin flicked the steering toggle on his chair, and Isadora jumped out of the way of the footrest. "Rum."

"Merlin, cousin," said Hermione. "You truly are only still alive because of Grix—_oh!_"

The elf with the drinks service had returned and tapped the back of her knee.

"Your recipe." He held out a piece of parchment.

Hermione unfolded it.

There was, written in a straightforward hand, a recipe for _Capezzoli di Venere._

"Chestnuts!" Hermione waved the parchment in triumph, then folded it again and stored it in her right pocket. "I'm afraid you'll have to find another partner, Mr. Avery. I need to find my brother. Perhaps Miss Longbottom might dance with you?"

Isadora smiled as though she had a secret she'd prefer to keep. "I've been engaged to dance with Mr. Weasley."

"Penelope then?"

Penelope, hands in her pockets and shoulder blades pressed against the mirrored wall nearby, shook her head in the negative. "No."

"You'll have to find Cressida, or any of the other dozens of beautiful young women here I suppose."

William studied his twin dishes of ice cream with a dour look.

"You'll excuse me." Hermione lay a sympathetic hand on his jacket sleeve. "I'm going to look for my brother."

She downed the rest of her punch, discarded the glass on a passing empty tray, and made a circuit of each of the rooms open to guests.

Silk was everywhere.

It rasped and whispered as the women wearing it stood and sat and walked and swayed. There was silk on bodies and silk in hair, wrapped over and around curls, natural and made with magic, in black and brown and blonde and auburn. If not wound up in silk, every woman's hair glinted with hints of gold and gems and polished pearls.

There were sharp elbows in wool jacket sleeves, too, shining leather shoes and clean white stockings. Raucous laughter rebounded off the walls from time to time, and shouts of both triumph and dismay preceded drifts of cigar smoke from the card room.

She searched for Draco's pale head above the din, and found it nowhere.

In the ladies' dressing room, smelling of musk and lavender, violet and vanilla, crowded with women adjusting the ribbons of their stockings and clearing away the gathered sweat in their decolletage with freshening spells, Hermione found a little desk with a quill and ink.

She pulled the recipe from her pocket and dashed a short and cheeky note to Draco across the top.

_One of a host of ecstasies that await you. -H_

She restored the recipe to her right pocket, and pushed her way through the haze of sweat and ambergris to the ballroom.

"I think he's creeping about in the hall," said Penelope from her place at the wall as Hermione passed. "Is he looking for something?"

Hermione bristled. "Not at all. I believe he spent some time at Thornwood Abbey in his youth and wanted to—"

Roland appeared again, slipping sideways between the backs of two gentlemen, half a head taller than both.

"Miss Penelope," he said, then with more enthusiasm, "Miss Granger."

Penelope had no time to be offended, as her attention was pulled away by Mrs. Avery, asking after the origins of a bracelet.

Roland gave his focus over to Hermione.

"I've engaged to dance with Miss Longbottom for the upcoming set," he said, "but wondered if you might be available for the following?"

On reflex, Hermione plunged her hand deep into her left pocket, and traced the edge of the parchment there.

"I'm very sorry. I need to find my brother."

"Yes, of course." He paused, and seeing that Penelope and Mrs. Avery had become engrossed in a discussion of silver scrollwork, leaned into Hermione's space by a degree. "I also wondered," he said, hushed and apprehensive, "if I might have a word this evening?"

Hermione took a half step back, but knocking into a burly gentleman, moved close to Roland again. "A word?"

Roland glanced around them. "It's a subject of some delicacy, but I should very much like to discuss entheogenic potionery and its"—his gaze searched across Hermione's face and his voice fell even further—"implications."

His eyebrows lifted and arched towards one another, amused and also inquiring and uncertain. In the light from the candles overhead and their thousand points of reflection at the mirrors on the walls, his warm blue eyes shone.

Hermione's skin felt like it was burning.

"Yes. Yes, I . ." She trailed off, fidgeting with the edge of the note in her pocket, and looked around in vain for Draco.

"Please, don't be distressed." His voice had fallen almost out of even her hearing. "I have no intention of compromising your virtue."

"That's true. You couldn't possibly compromise my virtue."

"Miss Granger." He took a step closer, then stopped. "_Hermione."_

"Mr. Weasley, please." She snaked her hand deeper into her left pocket and crushed the paper there. "Here." Before she could talk herself out of it, she pulled the paper from her pocket, and in a swift, covert movement, smuggled it into Roland's hand.

His eyes opened in surprise, and he glanced down.

"You must excuse me." Hermione offered him an awkward curtsy, not knowing whether it was appropriate in the least. "It's of vital importance that I find my brother."

Then she swept away in a swirl of silk.

Draco was in the smoking room having a Scotch.

"Did you find it?" she asked. She kept her voice low and a paranoid watch on the guests that passed them in the hall.

"Of course I didn't."

"What do you mean, 'of course'?"

"There are dozens of rooms in this house, Hermione. It's going to take a while."

"It would help if we knew the layout. I've tried to estimate, but don't have much to go on."

Draco rattled the ice around in his drink. "It's fine. I have a handle on it. I've been in every room in this house at least twice."

"Have you?" She gave him a curious smile. "How did that come about?"

Draco turned his face away for a moment, then said, at the rim of his glass, "You'll recall that this is Pansy's house."

"She gave you the formal tour two times, then?" Hermione laughed.

Draco swallowed his Scotch. "Something like that."

"Here's my pantry, here's a broom cupboard," Hermione said in mocking imitation, "now let's have a look in the laundry room, now back to the pantry … oh!" Hermione felt her skin grow warm.

Draco looked up at the ceiling.

"I suppose that's—" Hermione blinked. "Every single one? This house is enormous."

"We were teenagers. It was much easier to be here than at the Manor."

"I suppose it must have been." Hermione's throat felt unaccountably dry, and she swallowed. "How recently were you two … ?" She pinched her eyes shut. "Nevermind. Shall we go upstairs?"

Draco took her hand in his and guided her down the hallway and then, checking for observers in both directions, through a nondescript door that opened onto a narrow set of service stairs.

"I believe there are about thirty rooms on the first floor—"

"Good gods, Malfoy. The _entire house?_ How long did that take you?"

Draco drew in a resigned breath. "Not as long as it probably ought to have done, the first time round."

Hermione bumped against his back as he paused at the top of the stairs.

He gripped her hand tight. "Don't fall."

Scanning the hallways for watchful elves, they searched each room of the first floor of the east wing with as much care and discernment as possible.

"Shall we head up to the second floor?" In the hallway outside of a bedroom made up with blue linens, housing feminine trinkets and precisely zero snuff boxes, Hermione blew a stray curl away from her mouth and crossed her arms behind her back. "Another thirty?"

Draco nodded.

Hermione leaped towards him and clutched at his arm as a door creaked open down the hall.

William Avery looked around its edge.

"Oh!" His expression morphed from what looked like alarm and anger to alarm and embarrassment. He seemed ready to retreat, then pushed forward instead, and drew himself up tall. "Are you looking for something?"

Hermione brushed her palms over her skirts. "There's a balcony for the musicians. We wondered whether we might listen more closely."

Draco, arm around her waist, squeezed her hip.

Willam pointed back over his shoulder. "I believe there's a stairway in the northeast corner of the ballroom."

Their search of the first floor, and then the second, turned up nothing, so they danced.

"Do you think it might be in the elves' quarters?" Hermione asked, admiring the bend of Draco's wrist as his hand curved around hers.

They each regained their partners for a skipping turn, then met in the middle again.

"It's possible," he said. "It could be in the stables for all we know."

"A silver snuff box in the stables seems—oh, blast."

Hermione returned to William Avery, and standing side by side, clasped both of his hands, their arms crossed one over the other, and made a series of bouncing steps down the line of the dance.

"Miss Granger." Roland bowed to Hermione in their new formation. She curtsied, and as she rose, jolted when he touched her hand.

He pushed a folded slip of paper into her palm, then moved back to Isadora.

"Look sharp, cousin Granger! I'll have your toes!"

Hermione's next turn in the dance was with Martin, who held up his palm and, as she scrambled to slide the note from Roland into her left pocket, orbited her once in his chair. His movements were shockingly deft, given that he was thoroughly soused on fortified wine, approximately three pounds of beef soaked in herbed butter and twice as much chocolate.

Draco came down the dance arm in arm with Cressida, then stood beside Hermione. "What's that, then?" He tipped his chin towards her pocket.

"What?" Hermione curtsied across the center of the row, and rose again.

"Your note from the Weasel," he said, keeping his voice low. "I'm no great reader of Jane Austen, but accepting notes from men you're not related to strikes me as a bit of an anachronism. What are you on about?"

"_Nothing,_" she said through clenched teeth. "It's nothing at all."

"Hermione," he began, and she was taken aback by his tone, not at all amused and with a hint of warning. "Please tell me that you're not—"

The dance drew her away and restored her to William, who, watching Cressida and Draco hold hands once more, stepped on Hermione's left foot.

"I'm terribly sorry, Miss Granger."

"It's quite alright."

The beef drowned in butter, and the cake was delicious.

Sitting at a supper table, she slipped the note from Roland out of the edge of her pocket and read:

_Believe that I am moved beyond what might be expressed within the bounds of propriety, but please, tell me where we might meet alone, and allow me only a word. _

Hermione folded the note and smashed it down into the bottom of her left pocket.

"Hermione." From his seat beside her, Draco tilted towards her and laid his warm palm over the back of her elbow. "You _cannot _be serious. I recognize that your Weasley is by far the inferior model, but—"

She turned on him. "Don't you _dare._"

He scanned the crowd of guests around them. "This isn't what we're here for," he said, pressing her elbow. "Unless you're keen to stay and raise a family with this Weasel rather than the other one." He frowned and shook his head as though loosing himself from an ambushing cobweb. "I didn't consider the implications there until just this moment." He shook his head again and said no more.

"Here." Hermione dug into her right-hand pocket, and pulled out the folded parchment with the recipe. "I've asked after the recipe for the chocolate truffles for you."

Draco took it, still irritated with her, and without opening it, put it in his inner right suit pocket. "Thanks."

"Mr. Granger, Miss Granger!"

Sir Thomas bounded across the supper room, his entire person alight with the frenetic energy of an extreme extrovert in a large gathering of people with whom they are not all familiar. "I've caught you both sitting at last. Our neighbors have been wanting to be introduced!"

He stepped aside, and waved forward a pair of women.

One was some years into middle age—not above fifty, but wearing a dowdy dowager's gown made from heavy, forest green velvet that covered her unseasonably from chin to toes.

The other was youngish, evidently below thirty, but dressed with similar concern for propriety in starkly conservative dark plum velvet. Her gown had a lower neck than her mother's, but any skin that may have been revealed was covered by an opaque linen chemisette that even Hermione could tell was démodé for a ball.

Both had blonde hair so desaturated as to be nearly white, and pallid sea-grey eyes.

"Lady Malfoy, Miss Malfoy," said Sir Thomas, bouncing on the balls of his feet, "please allow me to introduce our young neighbors and cousins to Mr. Martin. Miss Granger—"

Hermione stood from her chair and curtsied.

"And her brother, Mr. Granger."

Draco followed Hermione to his feet, bowed, then stood at a sharp, perpendicular angle to the floor, vision locked on some distant object just beyond the tops of his grandmothers' heads.

"Lady Malfoy, Miss Malfoy. What a pleasure it is to meet you." Hermione looped her arm through Draco's.

Miss Malfoy laughed and smiled, displaying a row of small, white upper teeth.

Her laugh was short and twittering and laced with anxiety, and caused her mother to shoot her a hard sideways glance.

"Lady and Miss Malfoy were just now relating a tale of mystery, Grangers!" rumbled Sir Thomas, waggling both his eyebrows and his fingers. "It seems they've a ghost at the Manor!"

Miss Malfoy laughed her weird laugh again, and continued to smile.

"Not a ghost!" The oblong vowels of Received Pronunciation poured from her pink lips. "It's a man. Hiddy's quite certain of it."

Lady Malfoy closed her eyes in a patrician fashion in acknowledgement of the same.

"He's been prowling about the Manor in the dark, stealing poor Father's clothes." Miss Malfoy smiled wider at Draco. "Hiddy waited behind the curtains in Father's room and struck him in the leg with a fire iron just last night, and he went away."

Hermione looked up at Draco, whose stolid stare hadn't shifted an iota.

She tipped up on her toes, dragged at his arm until he bent his ear to her lips, and asked, "Which leg?"

"The left," he said under his breath and out of the side of his mouth.

"Are you alright?"

"Mostly."

Lady Malfoy gave her daughter a weak shove at the side of the arm, and nodded towards the Grangers.

"We're to give a picnic at Malfoy Manor," said Miss Malfoy. She was flustered and twittering again, and seemed to be reciting a prepared speech. "Saturday next. For all the young people in the neighborhood. We'd be delighted if you could come, Miss Granger." Her eyes flared at her many-times-great grandson. "Mr. Granger."

Draco bowed. "If we're still in the neighborhood, we'd be delighted."

"Are you intending to leave us, Grangers?" asked Sir Thomas.

"Leave us?" Cassandra entered the room, arm in arm with Cressida and sweating visibly across her brow and at the gold curls fraying at her temples. She pulled up beside her father, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and rested the side of her face against his. "Father, tell the Grangers they're not allowed to leave us."

Cressida, an ethereal Venus in fluid white, her curls trailing over one shoulder, looked at Draco and Hermione with her dark, dewy eyes opened wide.

"You're going? So soon?" Her satin alto voice quavered.

"I'm afraid so," said Draco with a bow. "We hope to return to London within a fortnight. Perhaps a week. Here." He reached behind himself. "Have a truffle, they're delicious."

Cressida took the truffle from Draco, and while looking at him intently, bit into it in a fashion Hermione wasn't sure she could replicate if she tried.

Hermione didn't eat chocolates often, but when she did, it was generally done while lying under a quilt on her sofa in her quiet studio flat two blocks off Diagon Alley, watching Muggle real estate television shows with Crookshanks on her lap. The occasional puff of powdered chocolate on the worn men's undershirt she wore around the flat was easy enough to clear away with a spell.

They tasted especially nice with a fresh cup of coffee.

To Cressida's credit it appeared unstudied, but her natural elegance dictated a small, sensual nibble, followed by an effeminate moan.

"Oh, Mr. Granger," she said.

Hermione half hoped to find chocolate between Cressida's teeth as she spoke, but she appeared immune to those sorts of prosaic humiliations.

"Here." Draco pulled the recipe from his pocket and handed it to Cressida. "For you."

Hermione shot him a glare, and he rolled his shoulders in dismissal.

"What?" he whispered. "She likes the truffles. We don't often get what we want in this life."

Cressida opened the recipe. As she read it, her eyes widened. In one swift movement, she crammed the note into the pocket of her dress, and stared at the wainscot, a red tint spreading across her face.

"Capezzoli di Venere!" said Sir Thomas with a wink. "Lady Longbottom and I indulged ourselves in Florence on our honeymoon tour. Did we not, my Lady? The truffles at the Pensione Bertolini!" he bawled over his shoulder at his wife.

Lady Longbottom stood tall, her elegance global and unimpeachable, in nearby conversation with a group of equally lovely matrons, and turned away from her husband with an enigmatic smile.

Miss Malfoy covered her mouth and twittered. "Capezzoli! _Ouch!_" She rubbed at the place where her mother had pinched her arm.

Hermione tipped her mouth to Draco's ear. "Do you know any Italian? What does that mean?"  
"What? Capezzoli di Venere?" He sighed. "Nipples of Venus."

"Oh, of course!" Hermione looked at the platter. "They're just like little breasts, aren't they?"

He threaded his hand around the curve of her waist. "They are."

Thirty rooms to a floor and three floors later, their search had come up empty.

"I think it's gone three in the morning." Hermione leaned over in her chair at the side of the ballroom, slipped a hand into her shoe, and rubbed the arch of her foot. "How is it you know how to dance so well, anyway, Malfoy?"

Draco, suit jacket hung over the back of his chair, reclined and sipped at his Scotch.

"You honestly want to know?"

She restored her shoe, and curled herself into Draco's side.

He hooked an arm across her shoulders. "We have a Christmas ball at the Manor every year." He clinked the ice in his glass. "Or, we did. Lots of quite stodgy traditions." His fingertips stroked over the bare skin of her upper arm as he swallowed the last of his drink.

"And you wore a cravat at them, didn't you?" she said, gazing up into his face, bleary through another three rounds of punch.

He nodded. "It was expected, yes."

She reached over and brushed at the fine and still-crisp silk bunched around his tie pin. "You do it well." Slumping like a wet sack of rice into his ribs, she closed her eyes. "You do everything so well."

"Except find a blasted snuff box. I think we're going to need to come out and ask for it."

"Mm hm."

"Mr. Granger. Miss Granger."

Hermione opened her eyes.

Roland Weasley gave them both a bow. To Hermione's surprise, he spoke to Draco. "Might I have a word, Mr. Granger?"

"A word?" Draco sat up, in no hurry, and drew his suit jacket back on. "Certainly."

Hermione got up and dragged herself past the bustling line of the dance, the music unflagging but the dancers a bit frayed and unhinged, and stood by one of the open doors to the balcony running the length of the ballroom.

Her skin, tacky with sweat, rose into gooseflesh in the cold predawn air. She rubbed at her arms with her palms.

"Miss Granger."

Hermione turned around at the throb of Cressida Longbottom's voice.

"Hello, Cressida." She embraced herself and shivered. "Have you been having a wonderful time?"

Cressida nodded, the molten gold tendrils of her curls shimmering with the movement. "I have, Miss Granger."

She stepped closer, near enough that when she laid her hand over Hermione's arm and whispered, Hermione didn't need to strain herself to hear.

"I can't—" Cressida stopped, and took a deep pull of the cool early air. "I can't give this to him myself, Miss Granger. But _please—_" She urged a folded slip of paper against Hermione's hand where she clutched her own arm.

Hermione took the paper.

"I should like, very much, just once, to … " Cressida's velvet voice trailed away with her gaze, staring unfocused into the dark gardens below. She returned her attention to Hermione, and spoke, still barely within hearing. "I should like him to kiss me."

Hermione began to unfold the paper.

"No, please." Cressida, adamant, shook her head. "You may read it, only, let me go before you do." She gripped Hermione's arm with urgent affection, then stepped back.

"If he asks, there's a camellia. Below the balcony on the east end of the gardens."

In the half light, her eyes were glossy and so dark as to seem colorless.

She walked away, and Hermione opened her note.

_I'll wait for you in the garden._

Hermione sighed, and pushed the note into her right pocket.

She found Draco in the billiards room, pouring another Scotch.

"Are we giving up, then?" She went to slide into his side, still exhausted, but instead of opening his arm to her, he stepped away.

She looked at him, a quizzical bend to her brow. "What's the matter?"

Draco scoffed, and said nothing.

"_What?_"

"Weasleys in all timelines, Granger. Your tastes remain constant."

Hermione's stomach clenched. "What are you talking about?"

The sharp clack of ivory against ivory sounded behind them, and Draco stared into the bottom of his glass. "Weasley"—he scoffed again—"_this_ Weasley, asked after your father." He drank, and smirked without humor into his glass.

"What?"

"He asked after your father, Hermione. And when informed no such person was available, asked me, as your presumptive guardian, whether he might pay us a call and speak with me about matters of some delicacy."

Hermione was unequal to speech.

"It seems that feelings have been communicated," he went on, "of a serious nature. And to his credit, Mr. Weasley is anxious to legitimize your _amour, _as is appropriate to the time period. So," he said, on another bleak half laugh, "let me be the first to wish you joy."

He refilled his glass from the decanter on the sideboard, hoisted it in a salute, and drank.

Hermione, half chilled and half overheated, skin sticky with layers of dried sweat over fresh, blinked.

"I gave him no indication … " she began. Unthinking, she stomped her foot like a child. "I wrote him a letter, Malfoy—"

"So I understand."

"Don't you dare look at me like that," she raged at a whisper. "Here." She pulled the folded note from Cressida from the bottom of her right pocket, and slapped it against Draco's lapel. "If you want a note, read that."

Draco set his glass down, and looking at the note with a sneer at his lip, unfolded it.

Hermione watched his eyes trace what was there.

He went over it again, and again, and as he did, his face wilted.

"How's that for a note? I'm not the only one who's cocked up here, Malfoy."

He folded the note, and then crushed it in his fist on his way to putting it in his pocket.

"Yes," he said, his tone dry and detached. He looked back at the drink on the sideboard as though it were a foreign object, and nodded. "Yes, of course."

Without saying anything further, he pushed past Hermione and left the room.

"I'd like to go home now."

On a small balcony overlooking the shadowed gardens, Hermione sank onto a bench beside Martin, and leaned her head against his shoulder.

Martin lifted his hand to her cheek, and gave it a trio of soft pats. "There, there, my gel. Dancing will take it out of you."

She closed her eyes.

"Might I join you, Miss Granger?"

Lifting her head was beyond her capacities, but with some effort, she forced her eyelids ajar.

Roland Weasley, sans jacket, stood nearby with his hands in his pockets.

She acquiesced with a tip of her head.

"Truffle time," said Martin. Before he hovered away, he patted her cheek once more, and with a warmhearted shove, lifted her head from his shoulder.

Hermione, required to hold herself up again, folded half into herself beside Roland.

He took her hand in his.

Hermione—drunk, hollow, and wretched—was too bone-weary to draw it away.

"I spoke with your brother." His voice was soft and beseeching. "And he said I might come to call at the cottage." He pressed her hand. "That I might meet with you alone."

She shook her head, and swallowed around the lump in her throat. "Did you not read my note?"

For some reason, he tensed, and without releasing her hand, slid further away on the bench.

He remained quiet for a long time.

"There are too many who maintain," he began, his words tentative and slow, "that a woman who hears the demands of her physical self, who honors them and ranks them alongside the demands of her mind—of her _heart—_is an unnatural creature, of dissipated values. But Hermione"—he pressed her hand to the warm center of his chest—"I accept no such censures and limitations for your sex. The thought of a wife who does not simply accept, but eagerly _anticipates_ the ecstasies that you've hinted at with such sweetly coquettish candor—"

"Anticipates the _what?_"

Hermione sat up tall, and finally pulled her hand away.

"This is neither the time nor the place," he continued, "but know that once we have an understanding, I will most warmly welcome the open flow of such sentiments between us."

Hermione stood up, wobbled, and pushed her hands down into the depths of her pockets.

There was nothing in the right, where she'd taken out the note from Cressida and given it to Draco.

She drew the slip of paper from her left.

Eyes shut, with the floor spinning below her, she thought back across the night.

There had been four.

One, a rejection: _There has been a mistake ..._

Two, a recipe: … _a host of ecstasies that await ..._

Three, a request: _Believe that I am moved … _

And four, a declaration: _I'll wait for you in the garden._

What ought to have been in her left-hand pocket was the note from Roland.

What Hermione unfurled was written in Cressida's hand—a simple, foolish plea in hopes of a virginal kiss.

"What did I give you before?" She turned on Roland, pushing the paper back down in her pocket. "When I handed you the note."

He sat up, and rubbed the back of his neck. "A recipe? Your cleverness, Miss Granger, is—"

Hermione turned her brandy-soaked mind over as quickly as it would go.

Draco, passing a note to Cressida, whose blushes were immediate.

_Tell me where we might meet alone, and allow me only a word._

Passing yet another to Draco herself in the billiards room:

_Please accept that our friendship can never be more than that._

Hermione jammed her hands down as far as she could reach in her pockets.

She felt past the crumpled note from Cressida, past her wand, tracing the distant corners and then inward, until she felt the fingertips of her right hand connect with those of her left.

"Gods help me." She tugged her hands from her pockets and braced herself on the balcony rail, and thought for a moment she might lean over it and be sick. "It's one pocket."

Roland stood, and laid a hand on her elbow.

"There's just the one pocket," she repeated, breathing through her nostrils. "It's like a hoodie."

"A what?"

Before Hermione could be pressed to explain, a storm of shouts erupted from the garden below.

"If you've laid a _finger_ on her, Granger, I swear to you—"

"I've done no such thing, you pillock! Shove off and go take a jump in your lake, you—"

There was a dull, organic sound, and then a woman's throbbing cry.

"Willy, _no!_"

Roland was up and over the rail before Hermione had a chance to open her mouth.

Then, before she'd located the stone flight of stairs leading down to the level of the garden, Tom Longbottom and Sir Thomas streamed past from the ballroom and leapt down after him.

It was dark in the gardens, but beside the camellia bush, it was clear that William had landed a punch.

Where his face was visible under William's left arm, Hermione could see that Draco's upper lip was swollen and bleeding, and as he jabbed at William's knee and brought them both to the ground, he took an elbow to the eye.

Cressida stood, both hands over her mouth, sobbing like death was waiting in the wings of the masculine drama playing out in front of her.

There was a loud ripping sound as Wiliam, bested by Draco on the ground, grasped at Draco's suit jacket as he attempted to stand, and tore the seam of his pocket away.

"Gods _damn_ you, that was my grandfather's best jacket, you inebriated blockhead!" Draco shouted.

As he fussed over the pocket, William got up to his feet and charged him headlong. He was stopped by a running tackle from Sir Thomas, who had him on the ground with his elbow bent back, crying out in anger.

"You're a cad, Granger! Of the worst sort, leading an innocent girl into—"

"A fellow doesn't exactly expect a woman to jump out of a shrub while he's getting some air, Avery," Draco said, brushing at his sleeves. "I was just as surprised as you were to find me there."

Cressida was bawling now, and covering her face.

"Between you and your sister, the flirt—" William twisted like an eel between Sir Thomas' knees, loosed his arms, slipped along the ground out from under him, then jumped up and began to dodge Tom Longbottom with a weaving, back and forth run around the edge of the garden.

He tore his jacket off, and pitched it into the camellia bush.

"A _flirt?_ _Really,_ Avery?" Draco stopped fussing with his jacket. "Don't you dare drag my sister into it, you Chauvinist ass."

William, sensing he'd successfully located a sore spot, doubled down.

"She's certainly captured Rolly's attention easily enough!" William darted just out of Tom Longbottom's reach.

Draco took off at a run towards William, and after cannonballing the top of his head into William's chest, landed a series of blows at his side before Roland grasped his elbows and hauled him backwards.

"Stop, please!" cried Cressida.

"What is your _deal,_ Avery?" Draco shouted, kicking at William as the latter approached. "The girl doesn't want you! Just accept it and move on as best you can like the rest of us!"

While William attempted to reach around Draco's flailing right leg and hit him in the ribs, Sir Thomas and Tom Longbottom made a successful play for his elbows, and dragged him across the lawn.

"My feelings have nothing to do with it. Your intentions, sir!" William twisted and writhed. "My quarrel is with your _intentions!_"

He made a series of twists, then held his arms up straight and dropped vertically in the fashion of toddlers in all worlds and across all timelines, and burst forth from knee level with a rush of power.

"Bloody well let me _go,_ Weasel!" Draco tugged at Roland's grip, but before he could free himself, William landed a solid punch against his temple.

"Ow! _Fuck!_"

"No!" wailed Cressida, clutching—or was that what _rending_ meant?—at her bosom.

Casting while rat-arsed was dubious at best—getting potted and casting at moving targets even more so—but it wouldn't be the first time Hermione had done it.

"You idiotic"—Hermione dug around in her kangaroo pocket for her wand—"ludicrous"—she hauled it out—"senseless"—gave it a tap against her palm, and watched it spark—"brainless"—she took aim at William, bobbing and weaving away from Tom Longbottom—"_peacocks!_"

Her stomach cramped, and as she hiccupped, her wand jumped.

William bounded through the air over Sir Thomas, who was surging across the lawn in a leaping tackle.

Hermione rolled her eyes, and steadied her wand hand with her left.

"_Stupefy!"_

"Daddy, darling, you have a clump of …" Cassandra picked at the collar of her father's jacket, and held up a green bundle. "You had more grass, just there."

The party waiting for their turn at the Floo was positively funereal.

Draco stood far from Hermione, holding a block of ice wrapped in a handkerchief to his brow, while the young Mrs. Longbottom cooed to her husband and brushed her fingertips over imaginary scrapes on his jaw.

Lady Longbottom, ever the model of grace and propriety, had her arm looped through Cressida's, and from time to time offered her daughter's arm a comforting, if ephemeral, stroke.

"'Twas a _ball_!" Martin bopped appreciatively in his chair. "What say you, Longbottom?"

"A ball to remember!" Sir Thomas shouted, still smiling and at the ready as dawn bled through the enormous windows at the front of the hall. "No Michaelmas of '97, of course—we're all leaving with all our teeth. Unless … "

He peered back over his shoulder at Draco, who closed his eyes and shook his head in the negative.

"Still!" Sir Thomas pronounced. "A snorter!"

"Thank you all for coming." Miss Parkinson in her vacuous fashion, not a hair out of place, curtsied and swallowed a yawn.

"There's our girl!" bawled Sir Thomas. "Home we go at last!"

Penelope hustled from the hall just beyond, with a furtive glance behind her.

"Alright, yes, let's go everyone," she said in a rush.

The Floo flared green, and the party began to step through.

"Here." As Hermione stepped forward, Penelope began to shove her hand into Hermione's left pocket.

"What are—"

"_Shh," _she hissed. "Just take it."

Penelope withdrew her hand, and the left side of Hermione's dress felt weighted down.

"It was in the head House elf's quarters, being used as a soap dish."

"Penelope, what on Earth—"

Penelope slapped her finger over her own lips and shot Hermione a hard look.

"Play _Jenny Tie the Bonnet!_" Martin shouted back over his shoulder towards the musicians, droning through a final set on the balcony on the far side of the ballroom.

A tiny sob escaped from Cressida.

"Did I get your toes, my gel?"

They left Thornwood Abbey with a renewal of steady weeping.

"You lot haven't done it by halves, then, have you?"

Grix, in a linen nightdress, blue plaid flannel robe and his lambskin slippers, pushed at the steering toggle on Martin's chair and guided the snoring professor into the cottage.

"You want a poultice for any of that?" he asked, pointing at Draco's face.

"It's fine." said Draco, diction muddy around the purple-red swell of his upper lip.

Grix laughed.

"Looks it, my lad."

Half an hour later, Hermione stood at the upstairs landing in her corset and chemise, listening while Grix hauled Martin into his bed.

"What'd you have to eat an' all, gaffer?"

"Chocolate nipples!" said Martin, spent and jovial.

"Sounds lovely. Arms up. No, both of 'em. _No,_ leave the brandy, I'd like to be in my own bed just now thank you very much."

Hermione knocked at Draco's door.

"Come in."

He was splayed out on his back on his bed, his waistcoat unbuttoned and a poultice over his eye.

His mattress dipped as she sat down beside him.

"Had their toes! One after the other!" Martin warbled from downstairs.

Hermione sighed. "It's not _fine,_ you know. Any of it."

Draco's jaw clenched. "It's _fine,_ Granger. We all had a bit too much and things got out of hand, that's all."

"I wrote that letter—"

"Save it, please." He rolled over onto his side, facing away from her. "I'm tired."

Hermione reached into the individual, clearly defined pocket she'd made in her chemise, and withdrew a hard object, about the size of a fist, wrapped in a handkerchief embroidered with the letter _P._

She placed it in the middle of the bed.

Draco turned back over, and looked down at it with one eye.

The silence between them hummed.

"That's not—"

Hermione nodded. "It is."

She reached over, and unwrapped the bundle.

The snuff box crouched in the center of Draco's bed, staring at them both with its maniacal, circular eyes.

Draco pushed back from it so hard he had to grip the coverlet to avoid falling off the side of the bed.

Hermione drew the gold comb out of her hair, set it on Draco's bedside, then began the laborious process of removing the pinning spells Margaret had placed.

"Should we …" Draco sat up. "I'm afraid to touch it."

Pulling her fingers through sweat-tangled loops of hair, Hermione shrugged. "It's been in my pocket for over an hour. I think it's alright."

Draco blinked, perplexed. "How did you come across it?"

"Penelope."

"That explains nothing. How did—"

"Four sisters. Four houses. She's the Slytherin."

Draco spread out his hands in mute disbelief.

"If it helps, I think she thought you were after it because of an intense personal interest in snuff boxes."

"Alright." He swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Should we run tests, do some initial …" He glared at the squatting figure sideling. "Perhaps indirect magic?"

"Not tonight. Can you untie my stays, please?" She turned her back to Draco.

He moved across the bed, avoiding contact with the box, and sitting on his knees, began to undo the back of her corset.

"It probably shouldn't spend the night in the same room as the Time Turner, though." She worked through a tangle at the end of a curl.

His fingers stopped.

"What?" she asked.

He remained silent and motionless behind her.

"What, Malfoy?" She turned around and looked at him.

He was always white, but just then he looked like bleached paper.

Without saying a word, he rose from the bed, crossed the room in three strides and snatched his suit jacket from the back of the chair at his desk.

He pushed his hands into the interior pockets, then the single intact pocket remaining on the outside.

Tenderly, almost reverently, he lifted the flap of the torn pocket, as though if he moved with precisely the right intention he could make it whole again without magic.

He stopped, stared at the wall, then looked at her.

"It's gone." She dropped her hands from where she'd been holding her stays in place.

Draco closed his eyes and nodded.

"I can see your …" Without opening his eyes, he waved his hand towards her. "On the left."

Hermione looked down.

"Oh!" She breathed in, and tugged up her chemise by a centimetre. "Has it been like that all night?"

"No. Just now."

She breathed out. "That's good. Thanks."

"Not a problem."


	9. Chapter 9: The Box

Hermione, long a connoisseur of the decadence of sleeping entirely alone, stretched out from corner to corner in her bed with her arms and legs spread like a starfish, but found the pleasure spoiled by the engine of anxiety sparking away in her stomach.

Dawn had progressed into daylight proper before she made her way to her room and collapsed against the sheets, cool and taut under the military sharpness of Grix's corner tucks.

Her exhaustion was as much of the mind as it was of the body, and in spite of the light streaming past the open shutters and across the coverlet, she sank into a gloom as tangible as the water in a lukewarm bath.

While she settled her head one way and then another, bunching and rebunching her pillow, rotating and flipping it, and then herself, barbs of distress pricked at her heart, each one a reminder of a mistake she had made the night before through blindness and distraction.

The deceiving pocket, the misdelivered notes, the faultless people misled.

She imagined the Time Turner sitting in its drawstring bag beneath a camellia bush, and then recollected herself, in a moment of sexual abandon, tugging away at years' worth of carefully tightened restraints in the same fashion that Draco, dutiful brother that he was, loosened her stays.

Her mind set it all before her as though it were a play. Once it had rehearsed the scene of the ball to its own satisfaction, it tackled the errors of the previous two weeks, then tracked backwards to her separation from Ron, forwards through the weeks that followed, and then on.

By way of a climax, the past six years of her life stood shoulder to shoulder across the proscenium line of the stage like Roman sagittarii, nocked their bows with irreparable regrets, and pierced her with a volley of self-reproach.

She was cold, but too tired to rouse herself and find a solution. Instead, she pressed her eyes closed harder than was helpful, and passed the morning kicking her linens away in convulsions of deferred embarrassment only to shiver and pull them back again, the minutes drawing themselves out in a cunning deception so that they each went on ten times as long as they ought to have done.

The early July day getting on with its business outside her window was offensively exquisite.

A clematis grew against the south face of the cottage, stretching its arms up weather-grey lattices to curl in curiosity around Hermione's window, where it walked its fingertips across the sill and steeped the room in the almondine scent of its star-shaped blooms. In the great old oak just beyond, a pair of red squirrels with orange coats and tufted ears scrambled over and around the heavy branches, insulting one another and scratching audibly at the bark as they ran, taunting her with their wakefulness and good cheer.

She resented them all: the churlish squirrels, the fragrant flowers on the vine, the fresh jar of yellow roses in the windowsill, and the depressing brightness of the indifferent sun.

Spent and numb, she had left the snuff box behind in Draco's room, abandoned like an appalling paperweight on the little table beside his bed.

She wasn't afraid of it then, but on the opposite side of the landing, with her eyelids closed, she watched it flicker into life and snatch him away from her with its arms of inexplicable fire, toss him through the gaps in the universe into fertile and unidentified fields, and lose him there forever.

If that happened, she'd be forced to go and fetch him.

A series of unsuccessful readjustments brought the cool side of her pillow up, and then the warm, and then the cool again. Finally, urged on by her nervous discomfort, and in the interest of not spending the remainder of her life tethered to a Time Turner in the search for him, she rose from the terrible disappointment that her bed had become, and drew her dressing gown around her shoulders.

In his room, far darker than hers, the shutters were closed and latched, and he lay on his side, facing away from the door.

The frame creaked as Hermione sat at the edge of the bed, but beyond his shallow and steady breath, he didn't move. She slid closer to him, and stroked her fingertips over the bare skin of his shoulder.

"Are you still awake?"

He shifted beneath his linens and sighed, a prolonged exhalation of pure fatigue, but didn't turn to look at her. "Unfortunately."

"Oh. I was—"

She drew up short at the sight of the snuff box, wallowing on the shadowed nightstand like a malignant toad.

It faced her head-on, shameless and vulgar. The dark obscured the finer details, but she picked out the circles of its eyes, simultaneously leering to either side and trained straight forward. It watched her, unblinking, as she slid across the bed and drew herself so close to Draco that her knees jostled the backs of his thighs.

She'd been assaulted by a pungent pine and lemon smell the moment she pulled the snuff box from her pocket after the ball, and its traces permeated the air over Draco's bed. Brown gelatinous globs of soap crowded into its orifices, and a fine film coated its entire surface, giving it the look of a creature wrapped in dirty cobwebs, with wet, rheumy eyes and a mouth full of rabid, pond-colored froth.

The gears of the nervous motor inside Hermione tightened, and the machine picked up speed.

"I was wondering—" She flushed with unanticipated self-consciousness, and spread her hand over the center of her chest. Recollecting that her dressing gown covered her admirably, she let it fall.

"Wondering what, Granger?" He turned to look at her, then shuffled his arm from beneath the bedclothes and scratched at the back of his ear. "It's late. No, gods. Early."

"Could we sleep together?"

Draco blinked.

"I don't mean in the sex way," she whispered.

"I didn't think you meant it in the sex way."

"It's only that you're in here with the—" She gestured at the snuff box, glowering at the pair of them with its mucousy eyes.

"Are you nervous about it all of a sudden?" he asked. "You seemed to think it was safe enough when you were marching about with it in your pocket."

"Yes, but that was _me._"

He leaned up higher and scowled. "Are you worried I'm going to run off with it?"  
"No," said Hermione. "I'm worried it's going to run off with _you._" She pinched the striped coverlet draped over Draco's hip between her fingers, then drew her hand away.

"You're worried it's going to run off with me?"

"Yes. And if something set it off while you were alone, and it _took_ you—" Another wave of mortification swept over her. She wrapped her arms around her middle, and fixed her gaze on the snuff box.

"I'd manage," said Draco. He poked at the box with a finger. "Gods, what a miserable object. It's seen some action, hasn't it?"

"Yes, it's horrid. I've been telling you as much since you first introduced it, but, Draco—if you _weren't_ alright. If I couldn't _find_ you straight away."

He narrowed his eyes at her and brushed his fingertips together to rid them of whatever pollution the snuff box might have soiled him with. "You're really worried."

Her face must have explained to him that she was, because after studying it for a while, he rolled out from underneath his linens without another word.

"Are those—" Hermione began.

"Are what?" He neatened the sheets and quilt, tucking them up as though making his bed for the day.

"You're wearing boxer shorts."

"I am."

"Are those the ones you had on when we arrived here?"

"No," he said. "I transfigured them. I'm not especially keen on wearing an ankle length dress to bed."

"Understandable. Neither am I, really." She sat back on her heels and watched him.

The rumor mill had been correct; he did have defined abdominals.

She would never admit that she'd attempted to Transfigure a new pair of knickers for herself out of a handkerchief, nor that she'd given up after repeatedly producing a fuchsia lace thong with a cheeky black velvet bow at the back.

Once the bedding was smoothed down, Draco lay back down on top of the lot. "Alright then." He pushed at Hermione's hip, then when she moved away from him, tugged the bedclothes out from under her and held them open. "Get in."

"What are you doing?"

"Welcoming you into my bed. Get in so I can go back to sleep. I'm exhausted, and the two of us have rather a lot to think about tomorrow."

"But you'll be cold—in just your pants, on top of the bedclothes like that."

He fumbled for his wand at the side table, pointed it at himself, and cast a warming charm. "There. Are you less concerned?"

She supposed that she was, and said so.

As she slid between his sheets, he turned away from her and faced the wall again. He didn't move, and Hermione thought he must have been asleep.

For long minutes she lay on her back, tracing the web of cracks in the ceiling plaster and worrying at a loose stub of thread at the edge of the coverlet.

Then quickly, before she could think better of it, she rolled towards him.

She slipped an arm around his waist, and as best as she could while pinched beneath the layers of his linens, nested her body into his from his shoulders to his hips, the tops of her feet tucked over his bum and her knees bunched into the center of his back.

"What are you doing?" He sounded perfectly awake.

Hermione flattened her hand against his chest, fingers splayed open, and rested her forehead at his nape.

She breathed in.

Pine and lemon, lavender and linen, tired flesh and the sweat of her own contrition.

The hot, frantic machinery inside her cooled, and then slowed, and as it stopped, a debilitating need for sleep began to take hold.

His heart marched briskly beneath her palm.

"If that blasted vole goes off again," she murmured, "it can take us together."

He didn't say anything at all to that.

She wondered whether he'd fallen asleep at last, until his hand closed over hers.

"I never meant that letter for you," she said. Her voice had slipped out of focus.

He took a very long time to answer her.

"Who was it meant for?"

"Ronald." She yawned, and began to drift away in earnest.

"Roland," he said.

"That's him."

There was another stretch of silence.

"What have you been up to, Hermione?"

"Nothing."

"It's not nothing." He tightened his hand over hers.

"It can't be anything," she mumbled. "The timing is all wrong."

He fell quiet again, and her mind sauntered down the path to sleep, unhurried and unconcerned.

He spoke once more, scarcely audible.

"It's a _swan."_

She might have laughed, or only dreamed that she did, but her thoughts, spent from racing from one end of her mind to the next, had grown scattered, and then dispersed, and the distinction no longer mattered.

—

She slept like the most thoroughly extinguished of the dead, and by the time she woke, the shadows sprouted from west to east across the floor.

Draco sat up against the headboard with his book in his hands, by appearances entirely indifferent to Hermione's legs twined around his left thigh.

She lifted her head from his chest and wiped at her mouth with the back of her wrist.

"Have I been drooling?" Her throat was dry, but there was a damp patch on his skin where her mouth had been.

He turned a page. "Only a little. The snoring was of greater concern."

"I always snore when I'm overtired."

"I know."

She settled her arm around his waist again, and enjoyed a gaping, feline yawn. "You're a furnace."

"All to the good, because your feet are freezing. You should consider seeing someone about your circulation."

"My circulation is extremely robust." She huddled up against the radiant heat of his skin. "When did you get under the covers?"

"At the point that you stole the coverlet out from underneath me, kicked me in the back end and said 'Stop pinching me.'"

"I don't recall doing that."

"Doesn't mean that it didn't happen."

"Why were you pinching me?"  
"I wasn't. I believe it was a complaint about not being able to steal the sheets as well."

"Mm." She yawned once more, scrubbed the soles of her feet along his nearly hairless calves and arched her back. "I don't think I've slept properly even once since we arrived here."

"And how did you fare on this side of the landing?" He raised his scarred eyebrow, but didn't shift his attention from his book.

"I've drooled on you, haven't I?" She ran the pad of her thumb over his bruised and swollen lip. "Look at you, broken man. Does it hurt?"  
"Only when you touch it."

"You ought to have Grix see to it."

He allowed her to trace her fingers over the cuts and bruises on his face, fading fast but still evident. "He brought a tray up earlier."

"Did he?"

"He did."

Hermione pushed aside the notion of Grix walking in to find her asleep and slobbering on Draco's sternum, and admired the breakfast tray sitting at the side of the bed. It remained untouched except for a missing teacup, which had migrated to the bedside next to Draco's elbow.

"I think he's taken pity on us. It's proper breakfast tea with milk and sugar." He brought his cup to his lips, blew on it, and took a drink. "I have no idea how it tastes, but the idea of it shores one up all the same. I haven't the courage to inquire after donuts."

She shifted up in the bed, poured herself a cup, then joined Draco in leaning against the headboard.

She didn't want to say it, but it needed saying.

"We're going to have to test it." She sipped her tea, and regarded the gruesome snuff box with contempt.

"Gods," he sneered, eyeing it sidelong. "I suppose we must."

"Breakfast first."

With her lips at the gilt rim of one of Martin's charming cups, Hermione discovered how dearly she missed a proper milky tea in the morning.

Grix's black tea was excellent, steeped strong and held piping hot in its silver pot.

She was astonished to also learn that sitting up in Draco's bed, stalling whatever doom the snuff box had in store, blowing across the surface of the tea to cool it before each swallow, she felt ...

… happy.

She rifled through her proverbial warm, dark, inside cupboards, searching for the middle-grade anxiety she always kept on hand, and found it quite unaccounted for.

She slid further down the bed and leaned into his arm, and when he lifted it over her shoulder and pulled her near, morning sweat-smelling boy that he was, she was happier still.

Her body suggested that it wouldn't be overly inconvenienced if she were to lie with him in his bed in the sex way rather than the not-sex way—that it was, in fact, standing entirely at the ready to do so—but the train of thought was swiftly retired from the line and broken down for scrap.

Barring that particular form of morning exercise, all they wanted for was—

Hermione sniffed, and glanced inquiringly at the tray. "Has Grix given us sausages?"

"He has."

She grumbled her carnivorous contentment.

"It's funny," she began some minutes later, belly lined with glorious grease and caged again at his side with her hot cup of tea, "but it feels out of time entirely, doesn't it? Like ..."

"Like an overstimulating holiday," he offered.

"Exactly."

"I know. It's the strangest thing."

"When you think about it, isn't this what we've dreamed of doing all along?" She peered up at him.

"You mean sitting abed with you in my pants the morning after a party where no one loses any teeth, having a cup of tea? That's the dream, yes."

"You know what I mean. Studying the past in person. That's the entire thrust of the ten-year plan for the department."

"The ten-year plan I drew up."

"Why are you the worst?" Hermione stroked her cheek against his chest. "I suppose it's a very good ten-year plan, as ten-year plans go."

"Have you ever come up with a better one?"

"No. Mine have all been disastrous."

"I'll own it projected a bit more intentionality to the time travel and significantly less hand-to-hand combat, but it has occurred to me that this is a perverse sort of professional success. Assuming we haven't upset the apple cart so thoroughly we come back to find we were never born."

Hermione huffed out a dry, snorting laugh.

"What? he asked.

"Nothing. Only I just thought how funny it would be to never find it."

"The Time Turner?"

She turned her face in towards his chest and surreptitiously smelled him. "Mm hm. You could become a fisherman. Grow a beard."

Draco's ribs twitched with a silent snicker. "I don't know if I have a beard in me. But I would try, if that's what you wanted."

Tentatively, Hermione grasped his left hand in her right.

He made no protest.

"I'll learn to knit and do you up a closet full of cable knit sweaters." She threaded their fingers together.

"Thank you very much. Patch my Mac as well."

"Darn your socks. Gut all the fishes. Make fish soup. I'll be a literal fishwife."

"Figurative one, too."

"Shut it." She closed her eyes and sighed, then felt him squeeze her hand.

"Not a fish sister?"

"We can't be fish siblings," she said emphatically. "Because clearly we'll have to have fish children. In order to continue the fish line."

"How many?"

"Fish or children?"

"Of these fish children of yours."

"Eighteen."

"Perfect." He blinked his eyes in approval. "Bossy little Granger girls, all of them."

"In cable knit jumpers."

"Especially the infants."

"The infants cabled right up."

"Great tempestuous masses of curls."

"The babies as well?"

"Naturally," he said. "We'll need to get started soon if we're going to fit in—"

He stopped speaking.

Then he pulled his hand away from hers, and became deeply absorbed in the work of drinking his tea.

"Ron would be devastated." With no forewarning, he poured the words over Hermione like a bucket of ice water.

She flushed with embarrassment and moved away from him, threw back a swallow of tea, drew a sharp pull of air over the burned surface of her tongue, and set her cup down on the breakfast tray with an unsteady hand.

"As will your mother, and Harry, and a whole lot of other people if we don't make it back."

Without ceremony, she leaned across his lap and grabbed the soapy wombat from the nightstand.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm taking it with me while I get dressed."

"No, you're not!" His tea sloshed over the rim of his cup as he set it aside, then captured her hips in his hands before she could haul herself out of his bed.

"Let me go, Malfoy." She twisted her back end about one way and then the next, but he didn't release her. "I'm not leaving it in here alone with you."

He hauled her back to himself. "And I'm supposed to be alright with you walking off with it?"  
"I'll be fine."

"What an astonishing hypocrite you are! Neither of us has the faintest idea what that thing might do, and I have absolutely no interest in being in another room when it happens."

"You were willing to sleep with it."

"I'm willing to sleep with just about anything, remember?"

She gave up trying to free herself from the hold he'd secured around her middle, and sat back on her heels. "It's nearly gone two o'clock. I need to dress."

"As do I," he muttered into her neck.

"We have a problem then, don't we?"

They struck a compromise.

Hermione crossed the cool floorboards of the landing on her bare feet, snuff box in hand. Draco trailed behind, with only the slight tug at her back to suggest he had taken hold of her chemise.

"Help me into my stays," she said when they'd made it to her room and closed the door.

"Be nice."

She lifted up her hair and cast a glance at him. "_Please_ help me into my stays."

He'd learned, and learned well, over several mornings of practice. His hands moved with confidence, cinching her quickly and giving the laces a final tug at the bottom before looping them closed. He tied her petticoat, too, then gathered the skirts of her white linen dress in his hands.

"Arms up." He hooked the dress over her head and let the skirts fall, then fastened the buttons up the back with swift fingers while she slipped her stockings on and tied her hair up into a passable bun.

"You'd think there would be spells for all this nonsense," he said, reclining on her bed while she floundered with the ribbons at her thighs.

"I wasn't aware of any spells for exactly this when we arrived, and I don't have access to an adequate library. I tried the shoe-lacing spell, and let me advise you that a boot and a corset are not the same thing. If we had another month here I'd devise an improvement, but we don't, and I won't."

He had stretched himself out fully across her bed, crossed his arms behind his head, and had chosen to wear his most insufferable, smarmy look. "Are you sure it's not because you like it when I dress and undress you, Hermione?"

She glowered at him. "I'm _quite_ sure."

Draco smuggled a handful of her skirts in his fist as they crossed the landing back to his room, and the heat beneath her indignation rose and began to simmer.

As they met the threshold, she twisted around without warning and collided with the barrier of his chest.

"We're going to have to separate at some point, you know," she said, looking up into his unreadable face. "We can't go on clinging to one another in perpetuity." He didn't respond, so she lifted up the badger and pointed its nose at him. "It wasn't instantaneous before. We had _some_ warning."

"You're not to leave the room with it unless I'm with you." His fingertips dug into the flesh of her hip.

"_That_ is not nice."

He rolled his eyes. "_Please,_ Miss Granger, kindly do not walk off with the catastrophe swan by yourself."

"What if I need the loo?"

"I'll wait outside the door."

She looked at him skeptically. "Then the same applies to you."

"Where's it going to sleep tonight?" he asked.

"In my bedroom."

"Then I'm sleeping in your bed."

"Fine."

"_Good._"

She slipped out of his grasp before he could tighten it again, tossed herself across his bed and curled up in the center, face politely averted while he pulled on his trousers and shirt.

Only a moment ago, she thought she wanted to slap at Draco's anxious and patronizingly helpful hands, but she was forced to swallow her pride when he parted from her to dress.

She immediately felt ill at ease.

Within the last few hours, six feet away had become too far.

She'd never experienced anything like it in all their years of work, despite one or two lost fingertips and the time she accidentally Dislocated a substantial hank of her hair, close to the scalp.

They'd both thoroughly lost their minds.

"Do you think we've been affected?" she asked. "By the time travel I mean."

"In what sense?"

His trousers rustled as he pulled them on, and she fixed her attention to the snuff box sitting on the bed beside her.

"You know—impacted. Mentally. By being thrown about through spacetime. Or if there's a curse attached to this ghastly creature, which I suppose there must be. It might have altered our personalities, don't you think? Maybe we're addled."

"I'm not addled."

She fought hard against the urge to turn over and watch him settle his trousers on his hips. "_I_ must be," she muttered to the snuff box.

She prodded at its latch with a fingertip, then flipped it open, revealing nothing inside beyond a soggy blob of soft brown soap.

She drew her wand from her pocket. "We ought to try a spell. Something very simple."

"We could summon it_,_" he suggested, muffled inside his shirt. "It's what got us into this mess. If it doesn't react, it may have spent its curse."

"Something simpler." Hermione tipped the box closed again with her wand, and struck it once soundly on the nose.

"What are you—" Draco crossed the room with three heavy footfalls and took her ankle in his hand.

"What are _you_?" Hermione asked, pistoning her foot.

His hold was both soft and uncompromising.

"You're messing with it!" he said sharply. "It's terrifying!"

"So you're going to grab onto my foot in case anything happens?"

"_Yes._"

She pushed her wand down into her pocket, flipped onto her back and held up her empty hands. "Look. I'm not an idiot, Draco. I wasn't going to perform any spell work until you were done dressing. Now let go of me."

Draco, shirt still unbuttoned, did no such thing. He went on looking down on her with fear and annoyance, like she'd been preoccupied with a book and wandered into a minefield.

"You just about gave me a bloody heart attack."

"We're both being _extremely_ _silly,_" she said.

"It's not going to seem _extremely silly_ if you find yourself sitting on Hadrian's wall being stared down by a Roman cavalry unit."

"We've never been afraid of our own research, Malfoy. I'm ashamed of us this morning. It's high time we take the badger by the horns—"

Draco covered his eyes with his available hand. "Gods help me."

"—and do what we need to do to get ourselves home."

"How would you like it if I was across the room from you, prodding it with my wand just for fun?"

"We're not discussing your recreational prodding habits." She pointed at the small mirror on his bureau. "Go and look at yourself. You've broken your head, you can't smell anything, you've permanently bisected your eyebrow, and now you're going about pugilizing yourself against other men's fists."

"That's not how boxing works."  
"It seems that's how _you_ work." She raised her free leg and flattened her stockinged foot against his chest. "And we cannot spend night after night huddled up together in our pants—"

"You haven't got any pants."

"—out of a possibly ungrounded fear that one of us is going to get chucked back in time and hauled off by horsemen, or eaten by pteranodons." She pumped her captured leg again, but his grip didn't ease. "It's untenable and absurd. It's—" Hermione's eyes searched for the clock on Draco's bureau "—just after two o'clock. The sooner we can prove this dreadful thing is harmless, the sooner we can stop trailing after one another like a pair of motherless ducklings."

"Stop poking the badger, Hermione."

"Don't tell me what to do! I'll poke all the badgers. Watch me do it." She reached over her head, felt around on the bed, and once she'd found the snuff box, she flipped its latch.

"How many pteranodons do you think you can take on by yourself?" he asked.

"Do I have my wand?"

"What?"

"If I have my wand, twelve. At least."

He shifted his hands to the undersides of her calves and yanked her away from the snuff box and to the edge of the bed.

"You've lost your mind."

"That is _exactly_ my point." She looked down and found her knees, in their white silk stockings, bracketing Draco's hips.

A half dozen centimetres of skirt and chemise stood between her modesty and providing Draco with a front row seat to a rather exceptional show. She quickly shoved her skirts down and flattened her hand over her chest.

He had evidently experienced the same revelation, evaluating the tops of her stockings at her open thighs before looking back at her face. His expression resembled that of a man who'd been told he won the lottery and had to decide in the next five minutes on an annuity or a lump sum payment.

"You've messed up my hair." Even to her own ear it sounded childlike and peevish.

It was the wrong thing to have said.

Quick as a curse he folded into her, pelvis snuggled between her legs, her legs wrapped around his waist.

Neither of them said anything. Their sole mutual concern was to join their mouths in a fit of damp supplication and keep them like that, sighing at the relief of it and the taste of tea and strawberries between them.

They kissed, and nothing more, for a very long time.

If he'd moved a hand to a breast, or worse yet, to where she lacked even the feeble defense of a pair of cheap-looking pink kickers, it would have been over. She'd have slid her hand into his trouser front and embarked on the data collection phase of the research into how, exactly, mingling their anatomy in that particular way would alter them.

But his hands had settled on either side of her head, tangled in her hair, and remained there.

It became manifest that the decision lay with her: whether to stop, or to continue as they were, or to induct him into the highly selective secret society of men who'd been permitted to fumble around beneath her skirts.

She would have done the latter. It had the finality of a rain shower that had already begun.

She needed to tell him something—before it happened, not after. It was terribly important.

She didn't know what it was.

She pushed at his chest and they parted, both of them gasping for breath.

His eyes were wide and wild, but he waited, watching her, his lower lip agape and gleaming.

Before she could say anything, something red and round, like a small rubber ball, shot through the open window, impacted Draco's temple, then rebounded onto the bed.

"What the _fuck?_" He jerked back reflexively, brought a hand to the side of his face, and stared out the window in shock.

Hermione froze, then felt above her head.

Something lay on the coverlet, cool and small and soft.

She folded it into her hand, brought it between them, and held it up.

"It's a strawberry." Hermione thrust it towards Draco for emphasis.

Draco gawped.

"Why are strawberries flying through my window?"

The hoarse and rattling call of a crow carried over the windowsill.

"Oh! It's Martin's crow."

Draco's face twisted under the strain of his effort to comprehend. "Martin has a crow?"

"He does. It's a thief."

"What does it steal?"

"Strawberries."

"And it throws them?"

"I suppose—well it would seem so. Maybe it was a squirrel?"

Draco closed his eyes and let his head fall towards his chest. "Either way."

The moment was broken.

He rolled away from her, dropped his arm over his eyes and lay prone on his back, breathing hard.

"You're right," he said. "I'm addled."

Hermione pushed her skirt and petticoat back down her thighs. "I told you we were."

"Fuck that crow."

"Agreed."

"And fuck my life."

She turned towards him. "_Your_ life? What about _my_ life? Having strawberries thrown at you by crows may not be your usual impetus for coitus-interruptus—"

"That is not what just happened."

"—but you've had enough weekend shags that you must be used to awkward Monday morning lift rides by now. I'm certainly not."

He shook his head, arm still resting over his eyes. "You never get used to them."

"I shouldn't think so. And I refuse to have an uncomfortable lift ride with you, of all people. Only angry ones."

"No, I don't want one either."

"We've made plans, Draco. They're important to me. I thought they were important to _you._" She reached over her head and picked up the muskrat. "But we've been losing our minds over your idiotic heirloom and its time travelling sex curse for days. It's completely unprofessional."

He moved his arm and looked at her, eyes wide and morose. "Hermione, please stop manhandling the swan. It's repulsive. And I really don't think either of us is properly equipped for dinosaur fighting." He sighed hard, then rotated onto his side. "How could you even suggest that our work isn't important to me?"

His shirt fell open, and Hermione found herself contemplating the smooth, pale skin over his right pectoral muscle.

"Is it? Sometimes it seems like it's all a joke to you."

"Would I have spent the last five years of my life being forced to enjoy coffee and being told off by you if it wasn't?"

"Being offered excellent coffee and being forced to enjoy it are not the same thing."

"Aren't they?"

They lay there, side by side, and breathed.

He rubbed his fingertips over his eyes. "What do you want to do?"

She wanted to lick his nipple.

"I want to test the box," she said.

"Alright." He dropped his hand to the bed and stared at her mouth.

She wanted to shove him further away, but only succeeded in reaching out and laying her hand over his heart. "No more kissing."

"I'm sorry about the kissing."

"You don't need to be sorry. It's not your fault. There's something wrong with both of us. But no more of it. And no sex, either."

"Can I sleep in your bed?"

"Yes, but not in the sex way."

"I shouldn't think that will be an issue if there's not going to be any kissing."

She curled her fingertips into his skin.

His eyes wandered over her, from her massacred hair to the hem of her dress, still tugged up to her thighs.

He sighed hard.

"We're going to need to change it."

"Change what?"

"The ten year plan."

"Why?"

"It's only a detour, I hope."

"We've only been gone for two weeks, Draco, it's hardly a detour."

"Are you serious? It's only been two weeks?"

"When am I ever not serious?"

"All the time. Do you remember when you made the spikey crown out of leftover brass strips and wrapped your cardigan around yourself like a scarf—"

"It was my stola."

"—and told me you were Lady Liberty? That crown's still hanging up next to the small wrenches on the wall behind the Dislocator by the way. You could put it on again."

"That was two years ago, and we'd been working on the Potentiograph for thirty six hours without a break. I'm talking about _right now."_

Draco brought his fingertips to Hermione's cheek, and swiped his thumb across her bottom lip. "Right now?"

A hard knot formed in Hermione's throat. "Yes. Right now."

His hand fell away. "It would be funny if we stayed, wouldn't it?"

Hermione nodded, hot beads of tears taking shape in the corners of her eyes. "Hilarious."

"But right now," he said quietly, "you seem like you very much want to go home."

"_Acci—_"

"_No!_"

The snuff box ogled them from the center of Draco's neatly made bed, where it luxuriated in a band of bright afternoon sunlight cutting across the coverlet.

In the full light of day it looked haggard and pathetic.

It was ugly to begin with, but its misadventures had turned it into suitable fuel for nightmares. Standing beside Draco on the other side of the room, she nearly felt sorry for it.

She angled her body into his side as best she could without causing his wand arm to wobble.

"Something simple."

"It doesn't get much simpler than _Accio_," he said, arm tensed under the crush of both her hands.

"Simpler than that."

Her instincts for both fighting and escape were sharply honed, and her feet tensed and lifted, readying her to take off at a gallop in any direction.

He dropped his wand to his side.

"Do you actually want to do this? We can hold off. Take another approach."

"No." She tightened her jaw and straightened her spine. "We need to get some kind of reassurance that it's not going to explode in our faces and send us back to the Upper Paleolithic."

"That sounds tremendously boring."

"I don't know about that."

His brow lifted. "Is that what was going on in that romance novel you read the other week?"

"Yes. But I am not letting you fill me with your increase in some lightly inhabited jungle, Malfoy."

Draco stared at the snuff box, then back at her.

"What was the title again? I'm going to ask Theo to put it on hold for me at the library."

"_In the Caverns of Her Desire. _It's the second book of a pentalogy." She waved her hand at the bed. "Do a _Wingardium Leviosa_. Simple_._"

Draco rolled his head in a half circle one direction, then back the other way. "Fine. Are you actually ready for this, Granger?"

_"Yes."_

_"Wing—_"

As his hand moved in the air, Hermione shifted behind him, still squeezing his right arm.

"You're going to need to be still, you know. If I cock up the spell I'm throwing at it we may be well on our way to realizing your caveman fantasies. Are you _biting_ me?"

Hermione pulled her mouth away from the back of Draco's right arm.

"Do it. Quickly."

Draco shook his head, then lifted his wand again.

"_Wingardium L—_oh _come on,_ Hermione. This is _exactly_ what you insisted we do today."

She'd moved around behind him, and had begun a futile effort to pull up onto her toes and look over his shoulder.

"Go on then," he said.

He held his elbows back, and Hermione used them as leverage to jump up and string her arms around his shoulders, clamp her thighs around his middle and cross her ankles tightly over his navel. "_Now._" She pointed over his shoulder at the snuff box on the bed and swished and flicked her imaginary wand.

"Are we feeling secure enough?" he asked.

"Yes. Do it."

Bent slightly forward to adjust for her weight on his back, Draco lifted his wand once more.

"_Wingardium_"—he flinched as Hermione bit softly into his shoulder—"_Leviosa._"

She eased her teeth from the fabric of his shirt, and the two of them watched in reverent silence as the snuff box rose into the air, hovered a meter over the bed, and began turning idly on a horizontal axis like a chicken roasting on a spit.

"_Oh,_" said Hermione.

"_Oh_ indeed." He hooked his elbows under her knees and anchored her tighter to his back. "You really ought to warn a fellow that you bite."

"I don't bite hard. And only when I'm _really_ worked up."

"I'll remember that when I'm hauling you to my cave over my shoulder. It's not doing anything weird."

"It isn't, is it?" Hermione breathed out, pulled her wand from her pocket, then kicked her heels into Draco's haunches. "Walk me over there. I'm going to _Scourgify_ it. It's disgusting."

In the nappish hour between three and four o'clock in the afternoon, Draco and Hermione emerged from Draco's bedroom and made their way downstairs.

A fire hissed and sparked cheerfully in the fireplace, and the smell of baking bread flooded the room. Margaret McClure sat by the hearth, chattering away, while Martin shouted back at her from his packet of Tartan wraps about his enthusiasm for butter and colliding with a lively dance partner.

"The young people, Miss Margaret!" Martin gestured, knocking his hand against the side of his teacup. "They like a break from the monotony, and they shall get it from me! A little _piétinement de la mule heureuse, _a little _to_ when one is expecting a _fro,_ keeps things interesting!"

"I should imagine it does, Mr. Martin!" said Margaret. "I was told there were an extraordinary number of couples, and there were so many guests that Miss Parkinson had to have extra chairs Transfigured in the dining room. I can't but wonder how hot it must have been. It's a miracle there weren't more than two rows in the garden!"

"There were two?" asked Draco, lowering himself down against a sofa cushion. He sounded disappointed. "Who had the other one?"

"Oh! Mr. Granger, you do look a fright," said Margaret. "Shall I go and fetch some of Mr. Grix's wonder ointment from the cabinet?"

"I suppose a little wonder ointment won't hurt." Draco draped his arm along the back of the sofa as Hermione sat beside him.

"Your crow's been throwing strawberries at my head," he said to Martin.

Martin's white-crowned head jolted to attention. "Has he?"

"He has." Draco pointed at his temple. "Got me right here at an extremely inopportune moment."

"What a bastard!" Martin's eyes glinted.

"We could not be more in agreement," said Draco.

"We'll show him who's king of the strawberries tomorrow."

"Where's Grix this afternoon?" Hermione asked.

She settled herself on the sofa beside Draco, and perched the snuff box at her knees, where it sat facing out into the room like a teacup terrier.

"Gone to Tobermory!" shouted Martin. "Back tomorrow! Time to eat the kraut!"

"I'm on the very strictest orders to keep you out of Mr. Grix's crocks," said Margaret, bustling back into the room with a tiny ceramic pot in her hand. She paused in front of Draco and held it up. "Shall I, or…?"

Draco took the ointment from her, lifted the lid, sniffed at the contents, and frowned.

"Oh, Draco. Give it here," said Hermione. She set the snuff box aside and took the jar from him, and sniffed it herself. Its odor was pungent and antiseptic, but pleasant. "It smells of tea tree oil." She dipped a finger into the pale yellow ointment inside, and began to daub it on the cuts and bruising at his lips.

Margaret regained her chair by the fire, and picked up a folded page.

"Mr. Grix has taken up an urgent errand, and gone to his brother on the Isle of Mull. He had no notice, and expressed his regret that he wasn't able to give you any. He sent for me this morning and asked whether I might come and assist Mr. Martin while he was away, and as I'm beforehand with the dresses for the Fitzswilliams's wedding, I said I'd be delighted. Mr. Martin's been showing me the proper way to perform a—how is it that you said it, Mr. Martin?"

"_Ciseaux!_" Martin offered.

"That's the one, and it sounds like a lovely step, very bold for a ball, but he nearly had one of Mr. Grix's crocks on the floor along with all of that lovely cabbage he's put up, so we've decided to have a sit. Mr. Martin has had a swallow of port, and now we're very calm, and snug as toast, and conversing like we always do."

Draco flinched as Hermione swiped the ointment on his chin.

"It's only the tiniest scratch," she whispered.

"But it hurts." Draco mooned at her with his great silver-grey eyes and plumped out his lower lip.

"Be strong," she murmured.

"I am _so_ strong, Granger. You have no idea how strong I am."

Hermione shook her head as she patted the pad of her finger around a circular bruise on Draco's jaw, then put the lid back on the pot and set it aside.

"We're about to read a letter from a very old friend at Oxford, aren't we Mr. Martin?" Margaret held up her sheet of letter paper, and then jolted in her chair. "Oh! I'm very sorry. You've had two owls as well this morning, Miss Granger. Only you and Mr. Granger have been abed, and I wasn't going to disturb you." She lifted a book from the table beside her and produced two envelopes, one sealed with silver wax, and the other with red.

"Who are they from?" Hermione asked as she took the envelopes from Margaret.

The first was stamped with the Malfoy seal, and contained a letter formally inviting everyone at Twiggybroke Cottage to a picnic at Malfoy Manor the following week.

The other was sealed with a plain, hasty stamp in the wax.

Her name appeared on the outside of the envelope in a strong and flowing hand, and when she opened the seal and unfurled the letter, she recognized the sender before she'd taken in what it said.

_Dear Miss Granger,_

_An urgent letter from home has brought me back into Devonshire sooner than expected. I had intended to call on you and your brother as early as this afternoon, but I cannot anticipate a return to Wiltshire and your company until, at the earliest, the picnic at Malfoy Manor Saturday next._

_Until then, only know that were it possible, I would say more, and if it is your wish, I am—_

_Yours most faithfully,_

_Roland Weasley_

"Who's writing to you, Hermione?" Draco peered sidelong at her while she read.

"No one." Hermione folded the letter and returned it to its envelope, then secreted both pieces of correspondence away in the depths of a pocket and adjusted her skirts at her knees.

"Mr. Martin," she said, grabbing the snuff box and thrusting it towards him, "my brother and I have come across this object, and it strikes us both as being potentially cursed."

Martin's vast nocturnal eyes fixed on the box and widened to luminous discs behind his spectacles.

As their fear had eased and their confidence grown, Hermione and Draco had cleaned and polished it to a level of shine it probably hadn't had since the time of its obscure and diabolical manufacture. They repaired its failing hinges, and straightened its clasp. It looked whole again, approaching a self-referential sort of artistic coherence, with the russet glow of the fire in the hearth reflecting in the discomforting circles of its eyes and blazing against its foul fur.

"Ha!" Martin folded forward in his chair to get a closer look. "What a delight!"  
Draco drew up in interest. "You think it's handsome?"

"It's hideous!" Martin answered.

"Oh, come _on._" Draco flattened himself back against the sofa, and his knee began to bounce irritably.

"Well, _well _done, the both of you!" Martin continued. He pointed a knobbly finger at the box. "What an extraordinary accomplishment!"

Hermione, torn between her desire to not take false credit for the production of the object and her wish to be agreeable, merely said, "Thank you."

"Hermione and I have run all of the diagnostic spells within our combined reach," Draco said, "and nothing has turned up out of the ordinary."

Half an hour before, perched on Draco's back and throttling his waist with her thighs, Hermione had performed half the spells, and he'd managed the other.

"It's possible that it's only an ordinary snuff box, but we thought that in order to be able to get a good night's rest, a second opinion was warranted." Hermione held up the box again, gleaming and dimly malign. "Could you take a look, and tell us if you notice anything unusual?"

"Besides its being awful to look at?" Martin asked with a smile fixed to his face.

Draco hoisted his chin in show of stoicism. "What we mean to ask is, does it appear to have any kind of spell, or curse, or really any magic attached to it at all, as far as you can tell?"

"Beyond what you've done to it?"

"We've only cleaned it today," said Draco. "I think we've done an admirable job."

Martin nodded, and considered it for a while, then drew his spry applewood wand from his blankets and waved his hand in a relaxed arc. Hermione tensed as the box rose into the air, drifted across the center of the room and hovered in front of Martin's chair.

He whispered a slew of unintelligible incantations, and a spray of vivid light burst from its surfaces in oval arms, like a thousand petals of a spherical flower, each one a different color and pulsing with a haze of its own luminescence. Some petals flared bright and dense, and others were wan and translucent.

Hermione had scoured more volumes in the libraries at Hogwarts and at the Ministry than anyone of her personal acquaintance, and never seen anything exactly like it.

Draco's hand slid across Hermione's knee, and when it found hers, she let him take it to his own lap, and keep it there.

The snuff box rolled slowly within the starburst of magic, first horizontally and then vertically, and then drawing the spell along as it moved, it settled down into Grix's hand, lighting the old man's face in shades of electric origin. Shifting lines reflected from the lenses of his spectacles like streaks of neon lights passing through the window of a car on a rainy night. He scrutinized the box, flipped it over, opened it, and shut it again. Then he lifted it to his nostrils and took a wary sniff.

"Smells like soap," he observed.

"Yes," said Draco. "It's been recently used in that capacity."

Martin blinked in approval. "I like lemon."

He whispered to the box again, and the flower wilted and disappeared. He muttered to it a final time, and it rose from his palm, then floated back across the space between him and Hermione, and seated itself in her lap.

"What do you think?" Hermione asked.

"Tremendous amount of magical residue," said Martin, tucking his wand away and steepling his fingers beneath his chin. "I couldn't tell you how it was done."

"Do you have any idea what sort of curse it was?" Hermione asked.

"No idea." Martin bundled himself down in his blankets. "It's all gone now. We can all curse it again later if you want." He smiled at Margaret. "Let's have this letter."

While Margaret sipped her tea and picked up Martin's correspondence, Hermione turned the snuff box over in her hands.

There had been something, and now it was gone. What was it?

She handed it to Draco, who took it from her with a resigned lack of haste.

"It's yours, I suppose," she said. "Another curse dispelled from a family heirloom. I promise I won't put it back on."

"Fantastic." Draco set it on the low table beside the sofa, where it twinkled its incivility at everyone in the room. "I'll just tuck it in my pocket when it's time to go, shall I?"

"My dearest friend," Margaret began, "I hope this letter finds you in excellent health, and that you are continuing to enjoy your retirement."

Martin sat up taller in his chair. "Fukkink!"

Draco stilled.

Margaret read down to the bottom of the page, and found the signature. "That's exactly right!"

Confusion evolved on every feature of Draco's face.

"Fucking?" he asked.

"Fukkink at Oxford," Hermione clarified.

Draco looked at her with suspicion. "Who's fucking at Oxford?"

"Nobody's fucking at Oxford," she said. "It's only the metallurgy don."

"Why is it only the metallurgy don gets to fuck?"

"Fukkink the metallurgist, ha!" Martin erupted. "Fukkink the scoundrel!"

"That seems ill-advised," said Draco, "but alright."

"Fukkink the sheep!"

Draco recoiled. "What?"

"Fukkink the circus clown!"

"No."

"Nobody's copulating with a clown, Malfoy," said Hermione.

"Fukkink can go and boil his—" Martin began.

"I'm writing to you today with extraordinary news," Margaret continued. "And will trust in your natural discretion and in the enduring integrity of our friendship to maintain this secret between us until I'm ready to publish the discovery. Early this morning I received an object via express owl that has been for some time a subject of great mutual interest. It came to me from sources unknown—I can only assume a black market collector stumbled upon something that he believed to be of value, but wasn't able to identify, and therefore was not able to sell. It appears to be broken, or adulterated in some fashion, but I believe it to be, my old friend, none other than a time travel device."

Hermione's pulse tore off at a gallop.

"The fucking metallurgist has the Time Turner," Draco said out loud.

Margaret read on. "My most ardent wish is that you will come to Oxford, at your very earliest convenience, to examine this object and give me your opinion, which I have always held in such high esteem."

Hermione leaned into Draco's side and brought her mouth to his ear. "We have to get to Fukkink as soon as possible," she whispered. "It's desperate."

Draco went rigid. "Spell this word for me."

"I should like to see you again, my old friend and convivial contender," read Margaret. "It's been a great too many years, and I have much to ask you, and much to share. My trust in your guardedness in this matter is unswerving. I await your prompt response, yours, etc. etc." Margaret looked up at her audience and smiled again. "Jan Fukkink."

Draco spoke close to Hermione's ear. "It's his _name?_"

"_Yes._ He's a Dutchman."

"That explains nothing."

"Draco." Hermione snatched a fistful of his shirt front and looked him straight on. "It's Fukkink: F-U-K-K-I-N-K. The _point_ is that he's got it, at Mettleworth College." She twisted her hand harder into his shirt. "We know where it is. All we have to do is go there and steal it from him."

She felt her eyes blazing, and realized she'd gone a quarter of the way to straddling him in her frenzy.

Draco pushed at her waist to shift her off of his left thigh. "One thing I really appreciate about you is that you're all in when there's an opportunity to do something unlawful."

"My chair, please, Miss Margaret!" Martin wriggled loose from his wraps and set to work hauling himself out of his chair and onto his legs. "Bring me my cap! Write to Fukkink! Tell him I'm coming for him!"

Draco jumped up from the sofa, and crossed to Martin, crouching to slide an arm around his back.

"No one's going to Oxford tonight, cousin," he said. "Let's sit you back down wherever you want to be for the moment. Dinner isn't too far off, and I have a vague impression that the room smells like bread."

Margaret had shot to her feet as well, and tucked the letter inside the book beside Martin's chair.

"You won't say anything?" Hermione asked, leveling a look of concern at Margaret. "About the letter, and what Mr. Martin's friend has told him about?"

Margaret laughed, warm and sincere, as she worked to straighten the books and papers around her and Martin's chairs. "I have more secrets than I have stories to tell, and you know I've no shortage of them." She plumped the small pillow that supported Martin's back while he sat. "There is bread, which is almost done now," she said, "And stew with dumplings, and our Katherine has sent over a sponge."

"Cake!" Martin clapped his hands and rubbed them together as Draco helped to reinstall him into his chair.

"You and me both, cousin. Shall we come with you to Oxford tomorrow?" Draco set to work replicating the folds and tucks of Martin's customary sandwich wrap of blankets. When he was finished, he pressed Martin's shoulder with a degree of affection that caused Hermione's heart to tumble over itself and come close to losing its balance.

"Yes! You and Hermione both must come. We'll let Fukkink know what we think about his broken object, won't we?"

"Show that crow what we think of his strawberries, too."

Martin took Draco's hand between his, and patted it. "He's a bastard."

"You have no idea."

They ate their cake first, and then their mutton and potatoes, with Margaret's soft and savory dumplings and bottles of hard cider that made Hermione's stomach fizz.

Just before bed, Hermione had a bath—very long, and very hot—and sang cider-fizzy songs from Muggle pop radio to herself while the ghastly snuff box leered at her from the edge of the tub.

She washed with lavender bar soap, and then washed some more, listening to Margaret chatter away while she put Martin to bed, and to the rustle of each page of Draco's book as he turned them from his seat outside the bathroom door.

She declined to relay the snuff box to Draco as she passed him in the hall, only told him over her shoulder as she walked up the stairs that she'd left him a clean towel on the side of the bath.

Between her and Draco's and Martin's spells, and in the absence of a Time Turner, the snuff box had lost its terror for her.

In the general mood of ease that arose in their detente with the box, loathing and revulsion had made way for pity. It was a homely object that no one wanted, cursed through no fault of its own, and now that it was impotent, it seemed sad.

She gave it pride of place beside the clutch of yellow roses in the jar in her windowsill. It looked well there, for such a contemptible thing, but no closer to attaining the shape of a swan.

She turned it away, averting its obnoxious eyes while she dried her body in her room, then back again once she'd slipped on a clean chemise.

There were times she left her hair to dry without a spell, and she allowed it to tonight, water falling every now and then from the tips of her curls in lavender-scented drops that felt cool and pleasing on her back.

Margaret had lit a fire in her little hearth, though the night was warm, and Hermione lay on her stomach on her bed with the window open, drawing her fingers through the strands of her hair as it dried, and reading one of Martin's books.

She and Draco were just as lost as they were that morning, she thought, perhaps even more so than she'd realized then, but a sense of ease had begun to grow in her belly and spread outward through her limbs.

The clematis no longer cloyed, and the quip and warble of an argumentative owl were welcome adjuncts to the snap of the fire in the hearth.

A trio of soft raps called her away from her book and to the door.

She eased it open to find Draco leaning in her door frame, hair damp from his bath, smelling of soap and mint.

His boxer shorts sat on his hips, but tonight he'd put on a white cotton t-shirt as well.

"How are you?" he asked.

"I'm doing very well, thank you." She indicated his shirt, crisp white and fitted. "Did you Transfigure this?"

He glanced down at himself. "I did."

She was good at Transfiguration. Extraordinary, actually. The first task she would undertake upon their return, once she was herself again, was perfecting the transmutation of a handkerchief into a pair of sensible but attractive cotton pants.

He looked over her shoulder, at the snuff box in her window.

"I can take it to my room tonight if you'd like," he offered. "I promise I won't let it run off with me."

"You can make no such promise."

"Can't I?"

"No, you can't."

"Then how can you guarantee that it's not going to snatch you away in the night?" he asked.

"I suppose I can't." She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned her hip against the door frame. "But I feel quite confident all the same."

He stood for a long while, looking at her freshly scrubbed face**,** and at her hair, still dripping onto her shoulders at rare intervals.

"Am I not allowed to feel secure around my own heirlooms now that they've been proven harmless?"

"No. Not around your appalling shrew, anyway. You're welcome to put on those loafers as soon as we're back at the Ministry."

His voice lowered. "Are you concerned about me?"  
"No." She slid one foot over the other to soothe her nerves. "Yes."

"Then how is it that I'm not allowed to be concerned about you?"

When Hermione tipped her head in acknowledgement, he took the fabric of her chemise between his fingertips.

"I liked sleeping with you last night, Hermione Granger. Very much. In the not-sex way." His mouth pulled up at one corner, though the sentiment didn't reach his eyes. "Even though you steal the sheets. And you kick." He gave her chemise a subtle tug. "And you bite." He paused, seemingly lost in thought. "But I don't want you to be in a position where you have to worry about explaining anything. I wouldn't want you to have any regrets about anything that happens while we're here."

Hermione turned her face upwards, and took him in.

There was something so artless and pure in his expression that Hermione felt like he had been made new, just for her, washed clean in the bath of something more than the prosaic corporeal film left behind by the goings on of a day and a night.

"Is this your way of telling me you don't want to sleep in my bed?" she asked.

"No." His answer came fast. "I'm telling you that if you want me to, I will. If you'd feel more secure."

"Would you? Feel more secure in my bed?"

His eyes were impossible. She didn't know why they needed to be so sincere.

"I would," he said. "And I promise I won't kiss you again while I'm in it."

She couldn't stand to look at him anymore, so she examined the floorboards beneath her, worn and clean, solid as the trees they came from. "No awkward lift rides."

A long silence opened between them, and into its spaces flowed the hypnotic tick of the grandfather clock in the cottage below, the tidal breath of a breeze in the oak, and the far off science fictional churr of a nightjar.

"No," he said finally. "That won't happen."

The breeze curled across the windowsill, and Hermione's candle guttered.

"Alright," she said.

"Alright?"

Hermione stepped aside, and made room for Draco to come in.


End file.
